


Unorthodox Modifications

by Bright_Elen



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Hand & Finger Kink, M/M, Oral Fixation, POV Cassian Andor, POV K-2SO, Robot Feels, Robot Sex, Robot/Human Relationships, Sensuality, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-09-24 00:02:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 46,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9689687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/pseuds/Bright_Elen
Summary: K-2SO finds out about hedonic processors by accident. What he ultimately does with that information is quite deliberate.Meanwhile, Cassian is maybe less than successful at controlling his emotions.Individual chapters tagged for smut and triggers.





	1. Chapter 1

Two years into his acquaintance with Cassian, the Alliance sends them to an industrialized Outer Rim world. It’s the kind of world that layers habitations over commercial space over factories over mines, nothing so highbrow as health and safety regulations keeping anything separate. It’s easy to infiltrate one area from another, easy for beings to come and go, and the Rebels will be gathering intelligence from several sources before they leave.

Tonight Cassian is entering the building from the front, pretending to be a customer, while Kaytoo breaks in by the back alley, slicing the databanks before the proprietors realize they should be worried. It’s their first mission in weeks that isn’t sitting in orbit to intercept transmissions, and they've both been eager for the chance to get out of the ship.

The door security is easy to bypass, the owners either not expecting military-grade enemies or unable to afford defending against them. Kaytoo’s photoreceptors adjust to the dim, and he navigates narrow corridors to find the cramped back office.

He spikes the databanks almost offhandedly. He has more than enough processing power left over to hope that the next target is more challenging.

As he scrolls near-mindlessly through the data, Kaytoo adjusts his sensors to take in his surroundings. The owner has put a relatively high amount of resources into soundproofing the warren of rooms, but Kaytoo’s advanced audio sensors pick up the louder assorted moans, gasps, and breathy words of the establishment.

Organics can be funny sometimes, especially when they're at the mercy of their biochemical responses.

If he tilts his head just right, Kaytoo can hear Cassian pretending to consider the various employees of the brothel.

“...more athletic? I was hoping for someone very flexible, maybe...”

Kaytoo chuckles softly to himself. His organic friend hasn’t exercised his own biochemical responses in many months. Maybe if Kaytoo waits long enough, Cassian will actually go through with it. It wouldn’t be terrible. Sex is supposed to reduce stress, after all.

He find the particular information they’re looking for and retracts his interface plug back into his arm.

“...no, no, too short. What about....”

Cassian’s running out of excuses. Kaytoo estimates approximately two and a quarter minutes remain before the owner throws him out for holding up business. Conversely, there is an eighty-seven percent chance Cassian will pick an employee at random before that. Kaytoo wonders which event will happen first, and what Cassian will do if he finds himself with a sex worker.

Kaytoo leaves the computer room, but instead of going back the way he came, he wanders more closely towards the front of the establishment. He comes to a door. There is a seventy-two-point-three percent chance it’s an intermediary hallway between the back and front, and a forty percent chance of an employee in it. There’s no security on this side. It will threaten the mission if Kaytoo is found out, but he is very good at eliminating witnesses and there’s a twenty-six percent chance of capturing audiovisual data if he explores further.

Kaytoo opens the door. He's right about it being a hallway. There’s also someone in it -

Two someones. Moaning fills the air while a pleasure droid presses her synthetic mouth to the throat of her partner, her delicate golden hand inside the woman’s loose pants. The woman’s face turns towards Kaytoo in surprise, and the ex-Imperial droid stops before even raising a fist.

All droids are built for a purpose. Kaytoo's always assumed that pleasure droids are specifically engineered for the pleasure of the organics who use them, any reactions they have merely simulations of enjoyment calculated for that end. But there are three droids in the hallway, no organics, and yet quite a lot of apparent enjoyment.

“Why are you doing that?” he finds himself asking. He examines the hallway for monitoring equipment, scans the droids for signs of recording. There are none; it's not a performance. “What purpose do these activities have?”

Now both pleasure droids are looking at Kaytoo. The one who’d been kissing the other laughs.

“What purpose do they usually have?”

Kaytoo is thrown by this question that’s obviously supposed to be rhetorical.

“To manipulate organics’ bodies and give them the illusion of sexual prowess.” Kaytoo tilts his head. “Isn’t it?”

The one against the wall wiggles her hips against the hand of her partner, a breathy sigh filling the air.

“Some organic, bless their lonely, perverted heart, wanted it to be real.” She sighs again. “You’ve never heard of hedonic processors? All pleasure droids have them.”

The other droid smiles wickedly, golden teeth glinting in the dim light, and then bites down on the first droid’s clavicle ridge.

“Or hedoloric processors,” the bitten one gasps, writhing against the wall, “for the more specialized.”

Kaytoo considers the droids. Cannot think of a reason why they would be lying.

“Thank you for that information.”

Then he raises an arm and shoots the droids with an ion pulse. They slide to the floor.

Kaytoo looks at them thoughtfully for another moment before leaving the way he came and making his way to the rendezvous point. He comms Cassian.

“I have it."

There is no reply. Kaytoo wonders idly which employee Cassian finally settled on.

When he appears a quarter hour later, Cassian's hair is falling three degrees further to the left than before, a sure sign that he’s combed it hastily with his fingers. Additionally, the tension in his jaw has reduced by twelve percent. Kaytoo is glad.

“Any trouble?” Cassian asks.

Kaytoo shrugs. “I was seen by droids. They weren’t recording.”

Mouth twisting, Cassian nods. He’s the only organic Kaytoo knows who would take a droid’s word for something.

Cassian is the only organic Kaytoo knows who thinks there’s something wrong with that.

“It has been five point four hours since you last ingested your disgusting nutrients. There is a kebab cart twenty-three meters to the west of here.”

Cassian’s grimace softens to almost a smile.

“That sounds great.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I no longer detect Imperial frequencies,” Kaytoo announces near mid-morning. Cassian rolls his shoulders and lets out a long breath. He's supposed to have been sleeping, but he hasn’t been tired enough to sleep through his own compulsive vigilance.

Kaytoo hadsn’t charged, either, but he can go three standard days between dockings.   

They leave the abandoned house they’ve hidden in overnight and move in a purposeful wander towards the town square. It’s a market day, and Cassian’s contact is supposed to meet them at noon.

Cassian is dressed in local clothes, his weapons hidden in the voluminous cloak, and Kaytoo given a blue-and-yellow paint job. He’s still obviously a KX, but now he looks like a civilian-repurposed KX.

In some urban areas, the open markets smell like goods - perfumes, cheeses, cut meat, fresh flowers, everything only one or two steps from use. Cassian strongly prefers them to the indoor, almost sterile markets of the Core worlds and luxury districts elsewhere, and not just because they offer more places to hide.

The market they’re going to is neither. Cassian grimaces and tries not to breathe too deeply.

“I count forty nerf and three banthas,” Kaytoo chirps, completely unbothered by the odor.

Cassian, watching the crowd, lets his senses drift. His eyes skim from stall to stall, from close at hand to looking at the bigger picture. Focusing on sounds is much the same - he can’t change the input into his ears, of course, but he can pay attention to voices speaking certain languages, listen for specific tones.

“Cassian--” Kaytoo starts, and then a solid weight thuds into Cassian’s side. He staggers one step, reflexively reaching for whatever hit him, and finds his hand over the shoulders of a small nerf.

“--Watch out.”

The animal bleats in confusion, and Cassian realizes it’s a baby, maybe a couple of months old. The horns are blunt nubs on the nerf’s forehead, the eyes huge and dark, the ears floppy.

Cassian’s face feels strange. He realizes he’s grinning at the stupid thing and that his hands have sunk into the wool around its neck.

It bleats again, still confused, but less distressed now that Cassian is stroking it.

“I haven’t seen a nerf calf in years,” he says to Kay. “Forgot how cute they are. Look at its big dumb face.”

He can feel Kaytoo’s skeptical regard in his scalp. “It certainly is...juvenile.”

Cassian keeps stroking the animal, watching it calm down with each slow pass of his hands, and feels more relaxed than he has in a very long time. He’ll figure out where the thing came from soon enough, and then he can go back to waiting for the contact.

Still, a spy is a spy, and Cassian’s ingrained habits drag his gaze from the nerf to the crowd. He looks long enough to let his hackles go down, and turns back to the calf.

Kaytoo has a hand on the animal’s back. Its ears are folded back, but Cassian guides it back to calm. Slowly, carefully, without exerting pressure or allowing wool to catch in his finger joints, Kaytoo begins to pet the creature. Cassian has to put considerable effort into not calling the whole thing adorable.

“I...cannot say I understand the appeal,” Kay admits to Cassian after a while. “The texture is...interesting, I suppose. I can detect the animal’s skin temperature and heart rate when I touch it, so it does provide more information.” Here Kay’s voice starts to take on the barest edge of frustration. “I definitely don’t feel the need to coo at it.”

Cassian lets his hands fall out of the wool, wipes the lanolin onto his stolen clothes. Kaytoo is looking at the nerf like it’s an unsolvable math problem.

“There are plenty of things I can’t perceive that you can,” he offers his friend. “Infrared. Polarization. More sonic frequencies.”

Kaytoo meets Cassian’s eyes. “Of course. You’re practically blind. Who thought jelly was a good material for photoreceptors? Honestly.”

Cassian laughs.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Totally talking out of my ass about planets and electromagnetism. Sorry.

The most important thing about going home is to never go there directly. There’s always at least two jumps between a mission and the Rebel base, ideally three or four. So when hyperspace releases the U-wing in a lonely system at the edge of the Western Reaches, that’s all it is, one stop of many. Kaytoo checks the ship’s scanners for signs of pursuit, ambush, or really bad luck.

“First jump complete,” Kaytoo says over the comms. Cassian is still washing up. He always takes longer in the shower, after. Kaytoo isn’t sure if it’s because his body needs the warmth or if he derives some psychological cleansing in addition to the physical.

Knowing Cassian’s poor heat retention and long list of regrets, probably both.

“Calculating next jump.” Kaytoo plugs in their current vector, the location of their next jump, and lets the navicomputer go to work.

He looks up from the console at last, and stares.

A gas giant fills the view, hundred thousand-kilometer gyres covering the surface. The crawling spirals are luminous with electromagnetism, layers of energy rippling and curling over one another, a shimmering churn punctuated by milliseconds of plasma-bright lightning branching again and again like thoughts racing through the body of the planet. Kaytoo forgets that he’s an individual sitting in a ship. He forgets his surroundings completely, which he hadn’t thought possible.

It’s disappointing that Cassian won’t see it. He can’t see most of the electromagnetic spectrum, after all; plenty of lovely space phenomena have looked like dust to him, or pale shadows of their full glory, or even, most disturbingly, nothing at all.

Kaytoo could record it, but they’d be far too busy for him to render it on a large screen, and small projections wouldn’t do the sight justice.

Something other than a proximity alarm beeps in the periphery of Kaytoo’s awareness. He doesn’t care.

More time might pass. Footsteps approach behind him.

“Kay? Is something wrong? Why haven’t we--oh.” Cassian rests his shower-damp hand on the back of Kaytoo’s chair. “Wow.”

Kaytoo turns to look at his friend. Looking at the planet, Cassian’s face is far more open than is usual right after a mission; lips gently parted, eyes open wide to take in as much as possible, slight curve at the corners of his mouth. It isn’t the face of someone looking at dust.

Kaytoo looks back at gas giant, this time using only the spectrum visible to humans.

The fractal lightning looks exactly the same, and to Cassian the storms are swirled oceanic blues, shades ranging from aquamarine to deepest violet, the whole planet luminous, only a little depth lost from Kaytoo’s normal range. What matters is that it’s still beautiful for the same reasons.

“You can see it.” Kaytoo says. It feels like sharing code, looking at this together. Like his core programming is touching Cassian’s.

He doesn’t say that. It seems silly for it to matter.

“I can? Wow.” Cassian is surprised. He leans forward, staring at the planet, the past mission forgotten the way Kaytoo had forgotten himself a few minutes prior. “I wonder why.”

“I am only forty-three percent certain, but I believe the swirls could mean the planet’s gasses are highly conductive to varied degrees.”

“That makes sense. What about the lightning?” Cassian folds his arms and leans against Kaytoo’s chair, shoulder bumping into the droid’s. Kaytoo senses the pressure but it feels too light, somehow, like his sensors aren’t working even when he knows they are.

“No idea.”

“We can look it up later,” Cassian says. He stands up and sits in his own chair.

The cockpit is too small for Kay to even extend his arms fully, but he feels too far away. What is wrong with him? Are his sensors and diagnostics both off?

Relaxing back into the chair, Cassian sighs, still watching the lightning. “I’m glad you didn’t jump.”

Kaytoo switches back to his usual vision. Switches again.

“Me too.”


	4. Chapter 4

Full data spike up the sleeve of his stolen Imperial uniform, Cassian marches to the lift with Kaytoo on his heels. He turns, face a neutral mask, and scans the walkway. No one is following them across the obsidian bridges. The lift doors close, but Cassian doesn’t break character yet.

The doors open again at the surface and they make their way to a landing pad. There are still a few dozen meters to go when a deep rumble shakes the spaceport and sets off alarms. People start dashing around, trying to take off or find their crew. Cassian and Kaytoo run for it. The explosions are in the fuel refinery proper, deep below the surface of Sullust, but they aren’t sticking around to find out just how badly they’d hurt the Empire.

The Rebel strike team is already aboard. Cassian nods to their leader.

“Let’s go!”

The ramp closes and the ship sprints into the black. The strike team are whooping (and in the case of the wookiee, ululating), thumping each other on their backs, joyful at a mission with no casualties. Cassian is glad for that, and for the data, and for not having had to look someone in the eye before shooting them. He takes off the enemy’s hat and jacket and straps into the last seat in the row, one shoulder against a spec ops soldier and the other against Kaytoo’s awkwardly-folded frame.

“I guess spies don’t make a racket when things go well?” The human next to him looks close to Cassian’s age, with similar dark hair and eyes, skin a little darker. He extends a hand toward Cassian. “Kes Dameron.”

Cassian takes it, shrugs. “Cassian Andor. I don’t know, don’t you think things went maybe a little too well?”

The man snorts. “Fair enough, Andor. I just figure the Force owes us a good one every now and then, given the way things have been going lately.”

“Would be nice if the Force agreed with you,” Cassian murmured. “But just to be safe I’m going to scan everyone and everything at the first jump and make sure we aren’t bringing anything nasty back with us.”

Now it’s the Pathfinder’s turn to shrug. “Better to prevent than lament.”  

Cassian blinks. “I haven’t heard someone say it like that in years. Where are you from?”

Kes grinned. “Yavin Four. You could say I’m a home-grown Rebel.”

“That’s how we say it on Fest, too, though you could probably tell from my accent.” Cassian smiles. “Nice to meet someone who comes from a similar culture.”

“No kidding,” Dameron says. “For all that the base is on Yavin, there aren’t that many Yavinese--”

Kes is cut off when the freighter shudders and drops unceremoniously out of hyperspace. Cassian’s next ten minutes involve a lot of gripping his seat and Kaytoo’s shoulder tightly, trying not to vomit, and fervently hoping they survive.

“On the bright side,” Kaytoo comments serenely as the flames of uncontrolled re-entry lick the viewports, “things aren’t going ‘too well’ any more.”

They’re forced to land on the nearest habitable world. The pilot is one of the best Cassian has seen, and all the Rebels survive the crash.

The ship doesn’t.

The Rebels haul themselves, the supplies they’d picked up before Sullust, and the freighter’s comms system out of the gently-smouldering starship into a tropical zone, a long gouge of broken trees and displaced earth running a good kilometer behind the wreck. It isn’t raining yet, thankfully.

People get assigned to purifying water, finding food, scouting the area for friend or foe, and constructing a rudimentary shelter. Cassian is on the building team while Kaytoo begins to repair the comms. Dameron is tasked with supply inventory.

After he’s helped set up the first tent, Cassian notices Dameron staring thoughtfully at the rations he’s organized. A moment later the Pathfinder walks over to one of the trees and plucks off a broad leaf. Sniffs it.

“Here we go,” says the human woman using a multi-tool to saw at a broken tree branch. “You can give yourself the antidote if it’s toxic, Dameron.”

“I’m pretty sure it isn’t. Hey, droid, can you analyze plants for poison?”

Kaytoo doesn’t even look up from the mess of wires. “Yes. I am equipped with the necessary chemical detection and a database of toxins for common Galactic species.” He continues tinkering.

Dameron, clearly expecting a more helpful response, frowns. Cassian hides his smile with a hand over his mouth.

Waving his leaf, Kes walks over to Kaytoo. “Okay, so analyze it.”

Kaytoo puts down the casing, wires, and tools, and takes Dameron’s leaf. His optics focus and re-focus on the sample, and then a tiny sensor emerges from the end of one finger. He draws it across the leaf, scraping the waxy surface.

A moment later, he hands the leaf back to Dameron. “This leaf and others like it have a point zero five two likelihood of toxicity to humans, and a point three three likelihood of toxicity to wookiees.”

Dameron grins and trots over to the shelter team. Cassian likes him a little less for failing to acknowledge Kaytoo’s assistance in any way. He still isn’t sure if it’s worse when people treat droids like equipment or when they’re openly hostile. Which one Kaytoo minds more depends on his mood, but right now Cassian can’t tell; his friend is seemingly absorbed in the repairs, and anyway they’ve both agreed that the Rebellion as a whole shouldn’t know just how independent Kaytoo has become. Any grievance short of a regulation breech is Cassian’s alone to hear.

Kes, oblivious, waves the leaf at Cassian and then at the supplies - which include quite a lot of a pale yellow, slightly sweet grain common on many worlds - and grins. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

He thinks he might be. Cassian does his best to put his old bitterness aside pay attention. “What about the filling?”

Kes picks up a packet of rations. “Second-rate bantha stew. Not great by itself but I bet we can spice it up a bit. Maybe see what the foraging team finds. It’ll take a while to make the masa, anyway.”

Cassian inspects the emergency mess kit and the other supplies. “You know, Dameron,” he says, mildly surprised, “I think this might work.” 

* * *

Once the shelters are up and the various teams return, Cassian and Kes organize people into food preparation. Cassian inventories the spices, tastes a bit of the stew packet, and whips up a doctored sample for the filling.

Kes tastes it, eyebrows climbing his forehead. “Holy shit, I didn’t know that stew could taste good. You’re definitely in charge of that part.”

Cassian smiles, just a little. “Good, because you’re in charge of the wrapping.” He gestures at the pile of leaves collected by the rest of the Pathfinders. “On Fest we use the husks from the grain plant.”

“Barbaric highlanders,” Kes jokes.

Cassian rolls his eyes. “Jungle savages.”

The tamales turn out well, for being thrown together out of salvage. Cassian sits with the others around the fire, using unwrapped leaves as plates, eating, telling stories, laughing. He doesn’t feel at home with the Pathfinders, but it’s nice, at least, to feel nourished by something he made himself and share it with others.

He’s halfway through his third tamal when Kaytoo finishes the comms and wanders over. He stays at the edge of the gathering, watching Cassian. The firelight gives his gray plating a reddish cast and throws deep shadows over the rest of him, his optics glowing steadily; it should look menacing, the hard lines of Imperial design highlighted by flames, but it isn’t. The opposite, really. Maybe it’s the subtleties of Kaytoo’s posture and movement, the way his learning and adaptation algorithms have replicated more and more organic mannerisms over the years. Maybe it’s simply the fact that Kay is the person Cassian relies on the most. Whatever the reason, he finds Kaytoo’s presence calming, and is glad that they’re stranded together.

Cassian isn’t sure how long they spend looking at each other. A Pathfinder finishes a story, someone thumps Cassian’s shoulder to tell his own, and by the time he looks back, Kaytoo has left.

* * *

Cassian volunteers for first watch, and the Pathfinders bed down under their newly-made shelters. There’s caf, and the spy helps himself before climbing atop the wreck for a better vantage point.

Kaytoo materializes on the ground below him, his head level with Cassian’s knees.

“How long have you been able to do that?” he asks Cassian after a few moments.

“What, cook?” Cassian shrugs. He has a feeling the question isn’t casual. “I learned after I joined the Alliance, before they thought I was old enough to go on missions.”

Kaytoo’s voice is quiet, so as not to disturb the others, but still has an edge. “You haven’t cooked in the last eight hundred and eighty-one days.”

Not quite two and a half years. The time they’ve known each other. Cassian starts to feel wary.

“Uh, no, I haven’t.”

“Why not?” Kaytoo turns to look up at Cassian. “You enjoyed it.”

Cassian snorts. He isn’t really surprised that Kay had been watching him even before coming over. He shrugs again. “It’s just not the same without someone to share it with. Doesn’t seem worth the effort when it’s just me.”

“I suppose enjoying yourself would cut in to your busy schedule of misery and unnecessary risks,” Kaytoo drawls, a little too bitterly for perfectly detached sarcasm.

“I don’t try to do either of those.” Cassian’s voice is sharper than he’d like, too.

“You don’t try not to, either,” Kaytoo says.

Cassian cuts the air with a gesture. “What am I supposed to do, Kay? Spies aren’t known for enjoying life, and I don’t know how to be anything else.”

Kaytoo’s back is straight, fists at his sides, head down. He looks at Cassian for a long moment before sighing in frustration, tension uncoiling from his limbs, and looking back out over the camp. For the rest of Cassian’s three hours, neither of them find anything to say, but the droid doesn’t leave, either. When Cassian finishes his vigil and lays down to rest, the last thing he sees before closing his eyes is Kay’s silhouette standing watch over him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you by SPACE TAMALES.


	5. Chapter 5

The junk dealer - perhaps once a protocol droid, many decades prior - eyes Kaytoo up and down. Their mismatched photoreceptors linger on the hastily-applied accents of green paint over Kay’s shoulders, which are exactly as unconvincing as he and Cassian had tried to tell Draven they were. People have been mistrustful of Kaytoo this entire mission. He’s only able to do anything at all because no one’s ever heard of Imperials using their own droids as informants.

Still, this is the Outer Rim. The dealer droid declines to mention the obvious. “What can I do for you, friend?”  

Kaytoo holds up a small holoprojector. “I’m looking for this Trandoshan. I’d be very grateful if someone could help me find him.”

The junk dealer shakes their head without even looking at the image. “Nope, sorry, I don’t do that kind of information. Please keep your gratitude.”

Kaytoo sighs. “It was worth a shot.” He puts the holo away, then looks around the cramped shop. The dealer seems to have quite a lot of chips, specialized hardware attachments, processors, dataspikes, all kinds of droid modifications. The proprietor has already pointedly turned away to rearrange some of their stock.

“Do you know much about auxiliary processor cross-compatibility between different series of droids?” Kaytoo asks.

The junk dealer turns around, guarded. “Plenty. How grateful would you be for that information?”

They haggle for a few moments. Kaytoo isn’t about to explain to Cassian what he would've spent mission credits on, so they finally settle on his high-quality, often-used but rarely-relevant barometric sensor.

The dealer opens up Kaytoo’s upper arm to extract it. “Which processor and which series of droids?”

“I wanted to know what the hardware requirements are for successful installation of a hedonic processor.”

The dealer gives him a look. Kaytoo has prepared himself not to flinch.

The dealer shrugs. “Pleasure droid synth-skin is riddled with tactile receptors, but really they’re just fine-tuned pressure and temperature sensors. In theory, it doesn’t matter how sensitive they are as long as they’re the same type,” they say, placing their new barometer carefully in a padded case. They apply pressurized air to the now-empty port in Kaytoo’s arm, close the plating and give the Rebel an unimpressed look. “Would probably even work in, for example, an Imperial KX.”

Kaytoo decides he doesn’t care what the dealer thinks. “What is the likelihood of complications?”

“In theory, less than two percent. In theory.” They tilt their head. “It’s not as though people tend to write reports on this kind of thing. Besides, it probably depends on the quality of the processor. You have no idea where they’ve been.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea, actually,” Kaytoo replies, and leaves. He thinks as he walks.

The dealer is correct about Kaytoo’s hardware: the KX series have pressure sensors in all limbs, and relatively sensitive ones in their hands. It wouldn’t do, after all, to crush a prisoner’s skull in the middle of questioning, or destroy important equipment accidentally. Similarly, while nearly all droids have internal temperature sensors for thermal self-regulation, KX droids are also equipped with such sensors in the hands to aid in detainment and interrogation.

He’s taken Cassian’s temperature and pulse with those sensors. Each time he has, it was simply a way to gather information. He derived satisfaction only from Cassian’s stabilized vital signs, not the experience itself. What would it be like to derive pleasure from touch? Would it be anything like the feeling he gets when looking at the radio signature of distant nebulae? The sense of fulfillment and lightness when he makes Cassian laugh?

Would it be anything like what Cassian himself feels? Many organics, humans among them, have pressure, temperature, and pain nerves in their skin. If it’s true that hedonic processors work from the first two kinds of input, it seems likely that the chip is a reasonable mimic of organic experience.

Likely. Probable. The idea lacks anything like real data behind it, but Kaytoo cannot discard it no matter how rational it would be to do so. For the first time, he finds something to envy about his previous existence.


	6. Chapter 6

Cassian brings the tankard to his lips, pretends to swallow, and puts it back down. The ale in it has long been room-temperature, but no one else in the place is close enough to tell that it’s been half-full for over an hour. Usually he has to drink a little more to keep up the illusion, but in a tavern set up in the middle of an ancient stone castle, there’s plenty of room to save his tongue and stomach.

He’ll give it another hour, he thinks, before calling it a night and trying again tomorrow. A full day of surreptitiously watching the ever-shifting crowd has exhausted him. It would be even worse if not for Kaytoo lurking in a nearby alcove like a particularly lanky suit of armor, allowing Cassian not to worry too much about getting jumped.

Later, a group of long-furred people get up from the table next to Cassian’s, singing loudly. They stumble to a doorway leading to the sleeping areas, managing not to knock anything over in the process, and then the tavern is filled with the much quieter noises of crackling fire, a game of dejarik in the corner, and the serving staff cleaning up. The spy starts a countdown of three minutes in his head.

He’s almost ready to fake a last drink when a familiar voice hails him: “Good evening, Watcher."

Cassian turns to look down into a warm, wrinkled face. The woman it belongs to smiles. "How good to see you again! Both of you,” she adds, waving to Kaytoo.

“Hello, Maz,” Cassian smiles. Of all the contacts and sources he works with, Kanata is one of his favorites, even if she does know too much for a spy’s liking. “Are you well?”

She gives an eloquent shrug. “Well enough. I haven’t seen too many friendly faces in too long.” Bespectacled eyes study Cassian’s face, then slide over to Kaytoo and back. “Come, join me in my private rooms. I’ll pour you something worth drinking and you can entertain me with your tall tales. Your friend, too; he looks like someone with a good sense of humor.”

Cassian laughs once in surprise. “That’s one interpretation.”

“He loves my jokes,” Kaytoo tells Maz, leaving the alcove. “And he could certainly use some entertainment.”

Cassian frowns. “I’m fine.”

Maz smirks as she turns to lead the way.

“You should listen to this one, Watcher,” she tells Cassian. “You watch everything else, but he watches you.”

“Tell me about it.” Cassian looks at Kay, staring down at him expectantly, and at Maz, who hasn’t checked to see if he’s coming. Sighing, he stands up. It doesn’t take long to catch up to her short strides.

“I’m so proud of you,” Kaytoo drawls.

“Shut up.” Even rolling his eyes, Cassian can’t quite keep a smile off his face.

As they walk, Cassian notes the route and additional exits. Most of these are windows, but he’s relatively sure he could drop from one uninjured, especially with Kaytoo’s help. The droid, for his part, looks around curiously, probably taking in all kinds of data from the kind of stone to the provenance of the wall hangings to the evidence of inhabitants past and present. Sometimes, when they’re alone and have the time, he tells Cassian what he learns and the conjectures he draws.

Maz’s private suite is grey stone, like the rest of the castle, but more weather-insulated and glowing warmly with firelight. The sitting room is furnished with a collection of overlapping, beautifully detailed carpets, long heavy drapes covering the darkened windows, and numerous cushions of every size, shape and color imaginable covering the tiered benches lining the walls. Several tables at different heights are arrayed throughout, and Maz gestures to a low piece decorated in a mosaic.

Kaytoo folds himself into a seated position on the floor, and Cassian takes a spot on the bench near his friend, settling back against a deep green pillow. They hear clinking and rummaging noises from the next room, and then Maz emerges with two glasses and a bottle.

“Rice wine from Lothal,” she explains, pouring two fingers for herself and Cassian. “Those farm planets sure know how to distill a grain spirit.” She raises her glass. “To balance and connection.”

Cassian murmurs an echo before drinking. The alcohol burns bright and clear down his throat, warmth spreading in its wake. “That is good. Thank you.” He almost expects Kay to say something dry about organics’ bizarre desire to poison themselves, or the fact that Cassian doesn’t share Kanata’s obvious faith, but the droid says nothing, only watches the two organics with calm interest.

Maz smiles. “You’re quite welcome, young man. What are nice things for but sharing?” She gestures in Kaytoo’s direction. “I’m afraid all I have to offer you is a charging cable.”

Kaytoo blinks, refocuses on Maz, and shakes his head slightly. “My power levels are at ninety-two percent.” A pause. “That’s very hospitable of you.”

A warm gratitude for Maz and something like the beginnings of trust bloom in Cassian’s chest, immediately chilled by some kind of dissatisfaction he can’t name. He takes another drink to cover the complicated emotion, the fire of it letting him exhale a little more of his tension.

Their hostess takes another sip and waves off Kaytoo. “I call it being civilized. Anyway, Watcher, tell me about whoever it is you’re pretending to be this time. I love a good story.”

The spy snorts. “Not while I’m still using it. I’ll tell you another one, though.”

Maz smiles coyly, and Cassian begins.

He talks, and Maz refills his glass, and soon Cassian is practically sprawling across the pillows, limbs warm and heavy. Kaytoo interjects his dry observations as always, and the pleasant haze of drunkenness makes Cassian smile more openly at them, makes Maz’s full-throated laughter bubble in his chest.

He tells her about the undercover mission that ended with him using his stolen Imperial credentials to pardon a dozen assorted criminals because he needed the chaos to help the political prisoner escape.

“This Weequay pirate gave me a tip,” he laughs, and Maz actually giggles and lays a hand on Cassian’s knee. “They credits turned out to be fake, but he was very charming.”

“Pirates often are,” Maz says, leaning in. She’s significantly warmer than a human, and Cassian puts an arm around her to feel more of it.

“Almost as charming as spies,” she adds, and starts sliding her hand up Cassian’s thigh.

He’s pretty sure she’s just flirting for flirting’s sake, so he chuckles.

Kaytoo abruptly stands up.

“Let’s go.” A large metal hand closes gently around Cassian’s free elbow. “Clearly this was a bad idea.”

Cassian blinks up at the sudden shift. “What?” He’s definitely had too much wine.

Kaytoo’s voice hardens. “Kanata, remove yourself or I will remove you.”

Cassian’s never heard that tone from him before.

Maz’s tiny hand leaves Cassian’s leg, and she pulls away from his side. She doesn’t look frightened or angry, though. She’s staring up and up at Kaytoo, spectacles audibly refocusing. “My, my. You don’t see this every day.”

“What?” Cassian asks again, and then Kaytoo is pulling him upright and guiding him towards the door.

“It’s all right, Watcher,” Maz says. “You should go. Your table will be ready for you tomorrow if you still need it.”

Kaytoo says nothing on the walk back to the ship. By the time they get back, the cool night air has made Cassian a little more alert.

“What was that?” he asks Kay once the ship is sealed.

“She was taking advantage of you,” the droid says, voice coldly angry.

Cassian shakes his head. “She didn’t mean anything by it, Kay. And even if she did I think I can take care of myself against someone two thirds my height. You didn’t have to threaten her.”

“You’re compromised.”

“You’re overreacting!” Cassian throws up his hands. “You’re the one who thought I should drink with her in the first place, anyway. One minute you’re pushing me to enjoy myself, the next you’re my chaperone. I don’t understand you.”

Kaytoo holds himself stiffly. “Wanting you to have fun and keeping you from being groped by strange organics aren’t mutually exclusive,” he snaps, “but since it clearly upsets you I’ll do my best to stop caring about your welfare."

Cassian opens his mouth, but Kaytoo opens the door and stalks out. “I’ll see you back at our table tomorrow,” he calls over his shoulder.

“Kay,” Cassian tries, but it comes out quietly and his friend doesn’t acknowledge him. He stands there staring at Kaytoo’s retreating form until the droid is swallowed by darkness.

He closes the ship and scrubs a hand over his face. Even after he cleans his teeth and lays down, he can’t stop his confusion swirling over everything. Kaytoo’s never done anything remotely like this; all of his other outbursts have been of the passive-aggressive variety, and always about something Cassian understood. In an organic, he’d call it jealousy, but that makes no sense for a droid.

Doesn’t it?

Rolling over again in his berth, Cassian remembers Senator Organa’s anxious protocol droid moaning about being left out of the loop. He seemed especially upset to learn his astromech friend hadn’t been. So jealousy is something droids can feel. But feeling it about lack of information makes sense for a synthetic.

Feeling it about someone else’s hand on Cassian’s leg? That isn’t something droids would do, because touch isn’t something droids want.

Cassian tries to put it from his mind, tries to focus only on his breath, but his brain won’t let him. Could some anomaly of Kay's reforged coding make him want that?

What would Kay’s hand feel like in place of Maz’s?

Barring manhandling to keep up a cover, the droid is unfailingly careful when touching Cassian, and he's never minded the hardness of his friend’s plating. He knows the texture of it, can almost feel its smoothness and weight on his skin. Too, those big mechanical hands sometimes carry a subtle warmth, depending on the environment. They'd become warmer still the longer they’d stay in contact with Cassian’s body.

Cassian shakes his head. These thoughts are ridiculous. There has to be another reason.

Maybe tomorrow he can get Kay to tell him what it is.


	7. Chapter 7

Kaytoo walks a wide perimeter around the ship, never more than a quick dash away. It doesn’t stop the cascade of angry thoughts surging through his processors, but the movement at least helps him dissipate the energy buzzing through his wires and servos, and in the short hours before dawn he uses up thirty-eight percent of his charge this way.

One of the most infuriating things about the whole thing is that it doesn't make sense. Cassian is right to be confused; Kaytoo himself doesn't understand his own reactions. Wanting Cassian to relax and experience pleasure makes sense -- it's good for the human’s stress levels. A strong desire to keep his friend from harm also makes sense, but it takes only a few minutes of solitude for Kaytoo to acknowledge that Cassian could, even inebriated, deflect or fight off Maz if necessary. Kaytoo doesn't like it when Cassian has to do that, but he knows he can. So the worst that could have come from the situation is an unpleasant experience, and in the context of Cassian’s life, a fairly mild one.

Seeing Cassian share physical closeness with someone trusted shouldn't elevate Kaytoo’s sense of danger. It absolutely shouldn't induce a combination of fear and longing that makes his chest plating feel warped. And no feeling, however strong, should be able to override his logic protocols.

Kaytoo’s drawn the wrong conclusions from bad data before, but this is the first time it was his judgement that was faulty.

Something tells him that it won't be the last.

He stands by the ship and watches the sun creep over the trees.

After twenty-nine minutes, the door hisses open behind him. Neither he nor Cassian say anything for another minute.

“It's a nice morning,” Cassian says. His voice is rough (and Kaytoo plans to make him rehydrate).

“Yes.” The scene contains a number of factors pleasing to organics, but they could be on a barren moon for all Kaytoo cares. He's just glad Cassian’s talking to him.

“Upon further analysis, it's clear that I was...incorrect.” He risks a look at his friend. The man is studying Kaytoo’s face, as if he could read secrets there the way he can with other organics. “I apologise for the faulty assessment of the situation.”

Cassian keeps looking at him, whatever thoughts he has beyond the droid’s guess, and his lack of response is creating in Kaytoo what can only be described as an anxiety state. The droid shifts, wondering what else he could say--certainly not an explanation of his sudden case of irrationality. Maybe--

“Don't worry about it,” Cassian says, and Kaytoo’s chest untwists a little. “It’s forgotten.”

Cassian steps down from the ship and gives Kaytoo’s shoulder a friendly thump. The droid’s sensors are working exactly as they always have, so the remoteness of the sensation makes no sense even as it triggers a wash of disappointment.

As he follows Cassian to the castle, Kaytoo decides that since he's already adrift in unknowns and blindsided by unexpected pitfalls, he might as well install a chip never designed for a droid like him. Explainable side effects would be a step up.

* * *

He finds a hedoloric processor first, but leaves it with the leering Twi'lek who offers a trade. The whole idea is reckless, but Kaytoo has no pain receptors and leaving a third of the processor’s circuits open is an entirely different level of risk.

The Rhodian four trading posts later is confused, but happy enough to accept a blank data spike Kaytoo lifted from Alliance storage. He feels no guilt; the number of Imperial spikes he’s stolen for the Rebellion more than makes up for it.

The processor is small in his hand. Old, too, the metal scraped in several places, connections re-soldered over past damage. But his initial inspection proves all the circuits functional, and he secretes it away in one of his storage compartments just before Cassian comms him for extraction.

In private moments over the next few days, Kaytoo runs every test he can think of. The processor contains no tracking devices, digital viruses, or corrosive materials. The configuration of circuitry isn't anything Kaytoo’s seen before, and suggests the device's function, so he’s reasonably sure he hasn't been sold some other kind of chip.

Still, Kaytoo waits before installing it. He knows that like all other nonessential processes he’ll have control over it; will be able to turn it on or off as he chooses, increase or decrease the intensity. The most common glitches tend to make it simply not work, and he can turn it off for the less common errors.

No, what worries him is the possibility that experiencing tactile pleasure will alter his behavior or programming on a fundamental level. He doesn’t want to end up like the droids in the brothel, so focused on chasing pleasure that they didn’t care that a strange Imperial droid had infiltrated their workplace.

Given that he would be simply adding the processor to his existing programming, Kaytoo calculates that there is only a nine point three six chance of this happening. To guard even against that, he designs a simple failsafe device. The processor will be deactivated after fifteen continuous minutes of use, or after a total of forty minutes within one chronological hour.

Even then, he waits. What if the installation solves nothing? There’s no evidence that pleasure is what he needs to feel connected. He doesn't even know what it feels like, so how could he miss it? It's completely irrational.

But Kaytoo hasn’t been one hundred percent rational since Cassian stripped the obediance protocols from his core and replaced them with learning algorithms. Kaytoo complains. Kaytoo makes jokes. Kaytoo has whims. And lately, Kaytoo experiences a gulf between what he feels and what he thinks he could be feeling.

He makes a plan.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut!

The safe house is a tiny box of an apartment, long enough for a mattress but barely wide enough to walk past, let alone hold other furniture.

“Sleep,” Kaytoo says, nudging the human onto the bed, and Cassian is so exhausted that he barely registers hitting the sheets.

When Cassian wakes later, it's still night. Kaytoo stands with his back to the wall by the window, his eyes glowing softly in low-output mode, no doubt monitoring radio frequencies and heat signatures. Even so, the spy has regained enough presence of mind to inventory the surroundings himself.

His blaster is on the bed within easy reach, its power cell at eighty percent. There’s only the one door, of course, but the window has a strip of explosive tape running along the inside and a small detonator in the top corner. City noises of speeder traffic and loud music filter through the room, mixing with the sounds of the building’s residents.

Oh, and Cassian is uncomfortably hard.

He shifts and tries to ease his breathing. Stares at the wall opposite. Wills it to pass.

The apartment’s shared refresher is out the door, down the hall, and past several unsecured doors. If he can just wait it out, he won’t have to risk leaving.

“You are in a state of arousal,” Kaytoo observes, and Cassian buries his face in the crook of his arm. It used to be that experiencing bodily functions in front of Kay was completely mundane, but right now he's mortified. A half-sensed idea as to why drifts closer to the front of his mind.

Cassian shies away from it. “Give me a minute.”

More breathing. He has a series of increasingly unpleasant images and memories that he usually calls up in moments like this, but he can’t hold on to any of them for more than a few seconds. Kaytoo’s attention is a magnetic field disrupting all thought.

“It has been one minute. You are still aroused.”

Cassian sits up, curling forward with his face in his hands. “Give me another minute.”

“You should bring yourself to orgasm,” the droid suggests in the same tone of voice used for encouraging him to eat and get enough fluids. Cassian laughs once into his hands.

It could be mistaken for a sob.

A little more time passes, Cassian isn’t sure how much, with no relief from his arousal. He’s steeling himself to pick up the blaster and creep down to the refresher when there’s a shift in the air. The quiet sound of Kaytoo’s knees settling on the floor in front of him sets his heart racing.

“If you won’t take care of yourself,” Kaytoo says, and Cassian sucks in a breath when his friend’s metal hands curl around each of his thighs, “Then let me take care of you.”

The hands start sliding upward, and Cassian’s cock strains against his pants. His chest is heaving now, and he finally uncovers his face to see Kaytoo’s mere inches away, staring intently at Cassian.

“Let me take care of you,” Kay says again, and something inside Cassian breaks. He swallows and nods.

One of Kay’s hands slides to rest on Cassian’s hip, gentle, unyielding fingers holding him in place, while the other opens his fly. Cassian’s own hands clutch at Kaytoo’s shoulders, and he clings, burying his face in the crook of the droid’s neck, the smell of metal and motor oil stronger there.

It’s some relief when Kaytoo peels Cassian’s pants away from his cock, but then the droid pauses.

“You’re leaking,” Kay says, mildly perplexed.

Cassian barks a laugh. “Yeah, Kay, that’s supposed to happen.”

“Why?”

 _Because I want you,_ Cassian doesn’t say. “It’s just what happens. Please,” he says, gripping Kaytoo’s shoulders harder. “Please, Kay. Your hand.”

“Like this?” Kaytoo asks, and very slowly curls his fingers around Cassian’s cock. The metal is cool, not cold, and the relief of the burning heat being drawn away from his skin is almost as great as the pleasure of the careful pressure.

“Yes,” Cassian moans, and his hips start rocking. “Yes, yes, like that, Kay.”

Kaytoo learns the basic theory fast. He releases Cassian’s hip and slides his hand to the small of his back, giving his friend more range of motion to fuck his fist. Cassian puts one of his hands over Kay’s, guiding it up and down around his shaft in a shifting rhythm, fast fast slow, fast fast slow, until Cassian feels his pleasure building almost intolerably and crushes himself to Kaytoo’s chest.

“Good, Cassian, yes, you’re almost there,” Kay murmurs. “Let me see you come, Cassian.”

Cassian’s blood catches fire, and he comes with a shuddering moan, face pressed against Kaytoo’s chest plating. Metal fingers stroke his cock through the waves of ecstasy.

He wakes with a start while he’s still in afterglow, facedown in his berth on the U-wing, a warm pool spreading out under him.

“Fuck.”

He lies there for another few moments before abruptly getting up, balling up the bedding, and stuffing it into the sanitizer. He takes a cool shower, carefully reviewing the upcoming mission in his head. He dresses, shaves, inspects his weapons.

Kaytoo is in the cockpit. Cassian sits without looking at him, and they start their next jump.


	9. Chapter 9

Several generals are visiting the Alliance base for some big meeting or other - Cassian is sitting in, too - and many of their droids are loitering around the hangar. The one Kaytoo wants to talk to is an orange and grey astromech. He has a reputation for surliness, recklessness, and insubordination, which makes him the perfect accomplice - and Kay’s kind of droid.

He finds him with his pincers in the guts of a freighter.

“Hello. Are you Cee-one Ten-Pee?”

The astromech puts some wiring down and rolls his body to a low angle to get a better look at Kaytoo.

«It’s Chopper. Who are you?»

“Kay-tooesso.”

«Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of you. Lots of undercover work, more explosions than strictly necessary. What do you want?»

“To install a new auxiliary processor. It requires a temporary shutdown.”

Chopper huffs. «That human of yours can't do it? I thought he was the one who jailbroke you.»

Kaytoo shifts uncomfortably. “He's busy. With business. All the time.”

Chopper’s optical aperture narrows. «Uh-huh. What kind of processor?»

Kaytoo’s photoreceptors slide to the left. “The kind that processes, um, input.”

Chopper stares. «How the hell are you a spy? No, don't answer that.» He resumes soldering wires into place. «I can't help if you don't tell me. You should know as well as I do that the kind of chip has a _teeny_ bit of impact on the installation.» His sarcasm, Kaytoo thinks, is probably apparent even to those who don't understand Binary.

The security droid glances around. They’re about as alone as they’re going to get in the hangar, which is still less suspicious than if he’d dragged Chopper off to somewhere actually private.

Kaytoo sighs. «Hedonic.»

«On a combat series?» Chopper warbles in disbelief. «That’s fucked up, even by my standards.»

Kaytoo tries not to wilt.

«I love it!»

Kaytoo blinks. “Ah. Good.”

The astromech rattles with laughter. «I mean, I've heard of protocol droids doing this mod, but a KX? It's like a rancor asking to cuddle. I see why you don’t what Captain what’s-his-name to know. It would be so embarrassing if he knew you want to-- »

“If you won’t do it, I can find someone else,” Kaytoo interrupts.

«Like who? Nobody else around here can be trusted not to squeal to the organics.»

Kaytoo tries not to sigh again. It is, after all, true.

«Don’t worry, I’ll do it,»  Chopper reassures. «You just need to accept that being laughed at is the price of the job.» He turns back to the freighter, and continues both the repairs and mocking Kaytoo at great, creative length.

Kaytoo relaxes a little, content to stand there if it will get him what he wants. Even if it is nearly five minutes.

Once Chopper has finished, he waves towards an empty service bay. «You’re gonna need to step into one of the maintenance wells. I know Wookiees shorter than you.»

“We can’t all be short, old and rusty,” Kaytoo says cheerfully.

«Your motherboard’s old and rusty.»

The installation takes sixteen minutes, and they suffer no interruptions. No one, it seems, wants to bother with the two orneriest droids in the Alliance. Kaytoo reboots and turns around to see Chopper staring down at him.

«I’ve never done one of those before, so go try it out now. If something goes catastrophically wrong I want to be able to fix it before I go.»

Kaytoo climbs out of the well. “That's surprisingly responsible of you.”

Chopper snorts. «Only because I don't want to deal with the bantha Hera would have if I broke an Intel droid. Somehow she always finds out about that kind of shit.»

The astromech is putting too much effort into sounding aggrieved for Kaytoo not to hear affection. “The things we do for them.”

Chopper gives him a look. «Oh. Huh. Well, I'm not gonna judge.»

Kaytoo returns the look. “What?”

The astromech laughs for some reason, then stares up at him when Kaytoo doesn't join. «You don't even realize... Maker.»

His pincer smacks Kaytoo’s leg and he gestures in the general direction of the rest of the base. «Get out of here, Handsy!» He rolls away muttering. «Seriously. Him. A spy. How.»

Kaytoo ignores the insults and moves towards the base’s interior. Anticipation hums so strongly through his systems that it takes effort to maintain a normal walking pace, but he manages it, because being interrupted now would about fry his circuits.

The meeting still in session, Kaytoo estimates at least fifty-one minutes before anyone comes looking for him specifically. He knows of a few rarely-used public rooms on base, but has already discarded them as too risky. If the higher-ups find out that he’s altered his own internal hardware, on his own initiative, without the knowledge or permission of organics, they'll erase his memory for sure, and Kaytoo has grown rather attached to his continued existence.

Besides, Chopper is right that the whole situation is embarassing. Not being subject to the vagaries of biochemical response is one of the main advantages of being a synthetic being, and here Kaytoo has maybe just thrown that away. If this goes badly, or if it's humiliating, Kaytoo wants no witnesses.

He finds the door he needs, types the code, and enters without being seen. The room is small, quiet, and dark enough that Kaytoo’s optics add significant light, and his chemical sensors indicate that organics would call the air stale. Still, the furniture and few personal items - two changes of clothes, a datapad, some kind of food bar - are tidy.

Kaytoo uses the control panel to lock the door behind him. Only Cassian will be able to open it, and only after a short delay.

Kaytoo stands still. This moment is the culmination of two hundred and sixteen days of learning, searching, planning. Two hundred and sixteen days of getting increasingly frustrated with his perception of certain stimuli. Two hundred and sixteen days of understanding himself less and less. Two hundred and sixteen days of fearing change, wanting it, and slowly realizing that it had already begun.

K-2SO turns on the hedonic processor.

He waits thirty seconds. Simply having it on gives no different input than before, even when he pushes the intensity from fifty percent to a hundred and back again.

Slowly, he presses his palms together, and an entirely new kind of data flows from his sensors. They’re the same hardware he’s always had, but the new chip has made the slight pressure somehow...warm? Satisfying? His own quiet gasp of surprise is very distant compared to the new sensation.

He pushes his hands together more strongly. The input becomes more intense, and he lessens the pressure. He repeats the actions, letting the gentle heat ebb and flow, captivated.

After three and a half minutes he decides to try something else. Kaytoo taps the fingers of his right hand on the palm of his left. Now the pleasure comes in little jolts that travel up the less-sensitive pressure sensors of his arms. He experiments with pressure and speed, cycles through different patterns, switches hands. He passes another six minutes this way.

He pulls his hands apart, reminding himself of his time limit. The strange thing is that even when he isn’t directly stimulating his tactile sensors, his processors are still engaged. The pleasure is a strange kind of haze over everything, like a gas in the atmosphere. Certain organic absurdities begin to make sense.

His hands are the same durasteel as the rest of his plating, the same density and hardness, and he wants to see what materials of other properties will feel like. He _wants,_  suddenly, with an intensity he's unprepared for, to experience as many different sensations as possible.

Kaytoo bends over the bed, places his hand on the mattress. He pushes down, watching the softness bulge up between his fingers, marvelling at the texture. He squeezes slightly, and this pleasure is less immediately satisfying than his own hands but more enticing for its difference. Two minutes here, and he abruptly stands upright.

He opens the locker. The edges against his fingertips send frissons through his system, but he’s more interested in what’s inside.

Cassian’s shirt whispers through his fingers. Somehow, the more he lets the material slide against and around his hands, the deeper the pleasure becomes. Each pull of his fingertips down the cloth, each millimeter of fibrous material that passes through a loose fist, each fold that accumulates on a palm raised slowly upward - all are tiny layers of pleasure building up over one another until it feels like Kaytoo’s completely submerged in it.

When he has one minute before his failsafe breaks the hedonic processor’s circuit, he is mildly alarmed to find himself regretting the time limit and wishing it was longer. He gathers up the shirt, cups the ball of it between both hands, and squeezes, amazed at how such a simple thing as the uneven give and pressure of fabric can be so entrancing.

The processor clicks off. It’s like being pulled from an oil bath all at once, jarring and leaving him disappointed in a way he hadn’t know existed before now.

Kaytoo stands there a moment longer, staring at his hands and the shirt. His fingers move the same as ever. He touches the cloth again, the same motions as before, and exactly as expected, it feels unremarkable. Distant. The same Kaytoo as ever.

But, no.

Even if the pleasure is gone from his sensations, he can still remember it. That, more than the strength of his immediate and powerful longing for it, validates his earlier fears: Kaytoo isn’t the same.

He doesn't know what that means yet.

Putting Cassian’s shirt back exactly as he’d found it - perhaps slightly more wrinkled - he shuts the locker. He waits until the corridor is empty, leaves the room, and goes back to the hangar. It seems strange that everything is just as it had been twenty minutes prior; Kaytoo has a whole new dimension of experience, and everyone else will simply assume he’d had an errand.

Nearly everyone. Chopper sees him coming and rolls to him, practically vibrating with curiosity. «Well, Handsy? Still got all your essential processes?»

Kaytoo looks at his own hands, then at Chopper. Nods.

“Plus one more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chopper might not be the asshole Kaytoo deserves, but he is the asshole Kaytoo needs right now.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anakin hates this chapter.

Once protected from all but the most sustainable of resource extraction, Samovar is now a planet-sized strip mine for the Empire. Mountains have been leveled, geometrically shaped valleys have been gouged deep into the crust, and runoff continues to poison the watersheds and oceans. Something like ninety percent of all life has gone extinct, and the remaining ten will either follow or become unrecognizable in its adaptation.

The weather patterns, once temperate, now rage in extremes of heat, wind, and torrential acid rains. Those who were able to afford moving off-world already have; those who remain struggle to survive, and do not expect much of their future.

It does leave a few more who are willing to inform on the Empire. The Rodian woman passing Cassian a holorecorder, for example, used to be comfortable enough to ignore politics.

Having your home destroyed tends to galvanize people.

There’s something wrong with the deep starfield of her eyes - feathery structures grow from each glittering fleck, and she doesn’t shield her face from the harsh angle of the morning sun. «I hope you use that to burn them.»

“We’ll do our best,” he says, and she nods grimly before leaving.

Cassian walks alone to the outskirts of the crumbling town. Kaytoo has been watching from an abandoned school.

“Are we done here?” the droid asks. “The mines produce a very loud, low-frequency sound. It’s like listening to the planet being eaten.”

A chill runs through Cassian at the description. He nods. “We’re done.”

They keep walking down the road towards the field where the U-wing is hidden.

They still have about two kilometers to go when the world darkens. Cassian frowns and looks up.

There is an enormous, dark cloud rising from the barren land, covering the sun. The wind starts to pick up.

“The mining itself and the deforestation have produced a lot of loose sand and dust,” Kaytoo observes. “There’s nothing to hold it down in a strong wind.”

Cassian swears. They start running.

The cloud moves alarmingly fast. It’s soon apparent that they aren’t going to make it, and Cassian looks around for some kind of shelter.

There’s an old farmhouse a few hundred meters to the south.

“This way!” he shouts. He and Kaytoo change course.

Even then, it isn’t enough. The sandstorm hits them like a physical object, nearly knocking Cassian over, and he must close his eyes almost completely to keep grit from blinding him. The dust scours every bit of exposed skin, works its way into every slightest opening in his clothes, invades his mouth and nose and ears. Each step is a struggle, and he puts all of his strength into staying on course and finding the door of the house.

Finally, finally he makes it. Kaytoo is right behind him, and closes the door on the gale.

Cassian tries to speak, but lungs and skin and sinuses burning, he coughs up sand instead. He wipes sand from his face, reflexive tears streaming down his cheeks to clear his eyes; shakes sand from his hair and clothes; spits out grit, and still there’s plenty left in him.

“I hate every single atom of this planet,” Kaytoo fumes. “But especially the silicon atoms.”

“Agreed,” Cassian manages, and hacks up more dust. He notices that the entire first floor of the house is covered in a layer of dirt, lying a bit thicker around Kaytoo; he's glad his friend has managed to shake some of it out, at least.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m full of grit. It’s absolutely everywhere,” Kaytoo seethes, “and if I move it’s going to grind in all my joints. I’ve already suffered some abrasion from getting inside. Did I mention I hate this planet?”

Cassian glances around; there’s a couch and table in the front room, both covered in dust. He wipes the table off as best he can and drags it over to Kaytoo.

“I’m gonna go look for anything to help,” he says, and searches the house.

There isn’t much; either the former owners took everything useful when they left, or looters have taken care of the leftovers. Cassian returns with a set of artist’s paintbrushes and half a tub of food shortening. He sets these on the table.

He strips to his sleeveless undershirt, hanging his jacket from a dead wall lamp. The shirt he shakes out as much as possible in the next room. Then he climbs onto the table.

“Before I open you up, I’ll brush off as much as I can, starting here,” he explains, bringing the soft cloth up to Kaytoo’s face. He removes the worst of the grit in careful strokes of the fabric, getting down to Kaytoo’s feet in less than three minutes. Everything left is too deeply wedged into the droid for the shirt to reach, so Cassian hangs it next to his jacket.

“You should drink,” Kaytoo chides him before he climbs back up on the table. “You’re very bad at body maintenance.”

Cassian shrugs and gets the canteen. “Still here, aren’t I?”

“You’re welcome.”

When Cassian is standing over Kaytoo again, he frowns at the sand accumulated in his friend’s eye sockets and the many crevices of his lower face. “I’m gonna try to blow some of it out, is that okay?”

“Try not to spit,” Kaytoo says. “Humans are so moist.”

“Sorry,” Cassian laughs, and swallows. Then he puts his lips together close to Kaytoo’s face and blows.

“This is so undignified,” Kaytoo complains. Cassian smiles and keeps going.

It turns out not to be nearly as effective as an air compressor. It is effective at making him a little light-headed, so he puts both hands on the droid’s shoulders to steady himself before tilting his head sideways to get at Kaytoo’s neck. When his face is scant centimeters from Kaytoo’s plating, the position flares with potent familiarity.

The dream. His hands on Kay’s shoulders, his face buried in the droid’s neck, Kay’s hands wrapped around Cassian. A cocktail of real and imagined sensations flood Cassian’s memory, and he has to turn away and breathe deeply for a moment. He focuses on the grit scraping every part of him, the storm raging outside, the fact that his friend needs him calm. This desire is useful to no one.

He has some practice in resisting; there have been other impossible passions in Cassian’s life, and he can deny feelings of any kind for the good of the Rebellion. Still, he’s a little worried this time; he’s never wanted someone he’s so close to, someone with whom a tempestuous affair would put so much at risk. Hell, he’s never been this close to anyone else.

He switches to the paintbrush.

“Thank goodness you’ve come to your senses,” Kaytoo sighs.

Cassian bites his lips and gets back to work.

The brush is slow going, but very effective in tiny spaces, and he uses it thoroughly to brush the grit from crevices and vents. A bit of shortening on a second brush helps him clean and lubricate exposed joints. He applies it in turn to Kaytoo’s neck, left shoulder, right shoulder, and starts his right elbow.

“Cassian, what does tickling feel like?” the droid asks. “Data suggests that organics would experience a ticklish sensation in response to what you’re doing.”

“A lot of people would, yeah.” He glances up at his friend. “It’s hard to describe. A bit like, I don’t know, something’s crawling on your skin and your body is trying to get away.” Using the hem of his undershirt, he cleans the muck from the greasy brush. “I’m not sure why it makes you laugh. It’s like this weird disabling switch on an organic’s skin.” He moves to the other elbow.

“That makes it sound like a low-intensity ion pulse,” the droid muses. “But with more flailing.”

Cassian smiles. “We definitely flail more.”

Kaytoo has a lot of surface area, and the dust is very fine, so it takes a long time to even finish cleaning the droid’s outside. When he finally does, Cassian wipes sweat from his forehead and drinks some more water.

“The storm appears to be over,” Kaytoo says. “I think I can walk without damaging myself now.”

Cassian shakes his head. “I’ll go get the ship. You wait here.”

Kaytoo looks at him a moment. “Only if you promise to eat and rest once we’re in hyperspace.”

Cassian blinks, then realizes he can’t actually remember how long it’s been since his last meal.

“Deal.”

It’s sandier outside than before the storm, and there’s some debris scattered around, but it’s the same dying world as before. The U-wing carries a layer of dirt, but it’s a lot easier to clean from the ship’s intakes than Kaytoo’s, and the rest of it blows off easily enough on liftoff.

He lands again at the farmhouse and waits while Kaytoo carefully makes his way to the ship. Cassian can do this, he thinks; compared to the weight of the lives he’s taken, the unnamed gravity between them is a light burden.


	11. Chapter 11

In the weeks since installing the processor, Kaytoo has sought out every possible sensation. The varying textures and densities of all accessible parts of the U-wing, the pulse of fuel cables feeding Rebel ships, the tug of a hyper-jump: he’s layered the new data over what he’d had before, expanding his codices in a new dimension. Time spent alone has become a treasure. He’s even, in moments of idleness or inattention, taken pleasure right under the noses of other Rebels.  

This is not one of those moments. Cassian wipes sand from Kaytoo with his own shirt, and there is no chance, none, of using the hedonic processor secretly. Nothing else he’s experienced is remotely like being cleaned with a soft touch, and he knows he wouldn’t be able to hide his reaction to an entirely new category of sensation. He won’t risk it. Especially since it’s Cassian standing close enough for Kaytoo’s thermal sensors to detect his body heat; Cassian’s hands gentle and methodical over every inch of the droid’s exterior components.

Perhaps it’s time to analyze the fact that a lot of his tactile desires are related to Cassian.

Earlier, for example, Cassian had leaned forward to blow the sand from the droid’s neck joints, and Kaytoo was struck with the powerful desire to put his arms around the human and hold their mismatched bodies together. He’s done it before when Cassian had been incapacitated; Kaytoo doesn’t have to imagine the warmth against his plating, the miniscule increase and decrease in pressure as breath moves through Cassian, the softness and density of his body. As always, the difference is not in his sensors.

What Kaytoo does have to imagine is the new dimension. Holding Cassian would, he thinks, feel like fulfilling a directive. Like closing a circuit. How could it not? If there’s anyone who is Kaytoo’s conducting path, it’s the one who freed him from the shackles in his code, the one who treats him as a person and not property, the one who forgets his own needs before Kaytoo’s.

As an experiment, his imagines several other people brushing sand from his joints. His responses vary, but none of them are even in the same range as his responses to Cassian.

The strange thing is that Kaytoo wants tactile pleasure at all; once that became true, wanting to touch Cassian was always the most probable outcome.

Which, in addition to the damned sand, is making the cleaning process fairly torturous. Kaytoo tries to distract himself with tactical analysis of the last mission; it helps, but not as much a he’d like. He’s still very aware of Cassian’s touch, and how much more connecting it could feel.

One day, when he’s ready, maybe he can tell Cassian about the processor. About wanting to share touch. Assuming he wasn’t too upset by the unorthodoxy of the modification, he might be willing to hold and be held.

Maybe one day.

* * *

On Yavin, Cassian somehow gets Kaytoo bumped to the head of the line for oil baths before he disappears to debrief.

«A sandstorm? Deepest sympathies.» The droid running the baths shudders. «Take as long as you need.»

“Thanks, I will.”

Wedged into a stone room next to the main hangar, the four baths are arranged in a square with a single lift arm servicing them all. They’re just deep enough to fully submerge the average protocol droid and wide enough to take the clunkiest astromechs; the oil only comes up to Kaytoo’s chest when his feet are flat on the bottom, but if he bends just right his can get almost all of himself under at once. Three of the wells are occupied. Two bathers are having a lively conversation in mixed Binary and Basic, but the noise from the lift arm and heaters is enough to make them part of the background noise.

After the attendant droid ensures that the lift arm is properly closed around Kaytoo, no one is paying him any attention. He activates the hedonic processor with defiant satisfaction.

Taking oil baths have always been good, in the sense that he’s always been able to feel it lubricating his joints and improving his function. It’s an overall increase in his well-being that he’s always compared to light exercise for organics.

Now, the slow sweep of the warm oil up his legs is like the opposite of the sandstorm: pleasure surrounding him, slipping into his joints and filling his hollow spaces, banishing the remaining grit and enveloping him in thick, smooth liquid.

“Oh,” he sighs, not too loud. “Yes.”

Kaytoo stands perfectly still savoring the moment. Four minutes of his hedonic time limit pass by the time he moves. He begins with his arms, just gently making half-circles around himself. The currents of oil he creates push delicately on his body, on his palms, cause tiny waves to lap at his chest. Then he bends his knees, letting the oil rise up and over his head, the sensation seeping into every articulation of his neck. Every part of him is warm and slick and clean.

He continues the gentle motions for another few minutes until suddenly the feelings crest and break. The hedonic processor floods his system with ecstasy so strong Kaytoo can’t do anything but experience it; can’t move, can’t analyze, can’t extrapolate. But it isn’t a freeze from an overload or a virus that isolates his processes from each other; it’s somehow the opposite, all his code and hardware connected by the overwhelming nova of pleasure.

It washes over him for almost a minute, during which he shudders with the simultaneous activation of all his moving parts; he thinks his vocabulator is operating, but he’s too overcome to register what he’s saying.

A soft reboot kicks in. Soon he can think and control his movements again. He finds himself slightly mortified by his reaction and hopes that the others didn’t notice. Still the time limit hasn’t been reached; his processes are awash in gratified languor.

After another minute, he stands up straight. No one is staring at him, and no one speaks to him. Kaytoo sighs in relief.

He runs a full diagnostic, just to be safe, but is unsurprised when everything comes back within functional parameters. The hedonic processor was designed so that droids could engage sexually with organics, after all, and sexual organics often experience orgasm.

Kaytoo doesn’t even get to the point of projecting specific scenarios; the abstract concept of experiencing orgasm with Cassian is intolerably compelling and he viciously stops the processes devoted to it.

Of course the hedonic processor had been leading to sexuality. He should have realized it when he first learned about it in a brothel, for crying out loud. But K-2SO was never coded with protocols for desire or emotion. Now he’s saddled himself with the capacity for ecstasy, the yearning to share it, and the absurd hope that Cassian could have even the slightest sexual interest in a droid.

If he were to tell his friend, the best he could expect is a gentle rejection followed by never speaking of it again.

It’s more likely Cassian would stop working with him. And if things went very badly indeed, there could be a second reprogramming.

He considers finding Chopper to have the processor removed.

The arm lifts him out of the bath, and he doesn’t. He goes to a charging station in the hangar, and he doesn’t.

He still could. He might.

It would probably be for the best.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter CW: Non-con drug use, kidnapping attempt, canon-typical violence.

Nar Shaddaa is, as always, a bustling hub of black-market commerce. Most of the galaxy, the Rebellion included, need illicit goods and services at some point. People like Cassian are its bread and butter. Places like the dive bar he’s in probably account for more of the infrastructure than the plumbing or electricity.

The pale human across the table, too young to have legal status on most worlds, snorts.

“A mutating skimming-disabling virus? Those don't exactly grow on trees.”

Cassian doesn’t blink. “I thought Warryk Drexel could get me whatever I wanted.”

The kid narrows his eyes. “For a price. More than the likes of you can afford.”

“You gonna give me a number or just waste my time?”

Drexel scoffs. “Fine. Ten thousand credits.”

Cassian’s face is a mask. “Five thousand.”

The kid laughs. “Oh, you’re bargaining now? That’s not how this works.”

The spy shrugs and moves towards the exit. “I guess you don’t want my money, then.”

Bloodshot eyes narrow. “Eight and a half.”

“Six.”

“Seven.”

Cassian lets it sit, then nods. “Seven.”

The kid waits, then gestures in impatience. “Well? Haven’t got all day.”

The spy raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Neither have I. You gonna show me the merchandise or what?”

The only warning Cassian has is the briefest glance Drexel flicks over his shoulder, and then something sharp hits the spy in the neck.

The kid grins. “Got great merchandise right here.”

Cassian’s vision tunnels. Distantly he feels himself grabbed roughly from behind. As he loses consciousness, all Cassian can think is that Kay is going to be angry with him.

* * *

The dosage must have been meant for someone with less drug resistance than a spy, because Cassian comes to hanging over the shoulders of someone tall with inhuman legs and not bound in a dark room somewhere. That’s good, he can work with that. He stays limp, only opening his eyes the barest amount, and listens.

The sounds of voices and drinking have been replaced with vehicles and wind. He can smell exhaust and some other kind of industrial by-product. It isn’t pleasant and he has to work not to vomit.

The guy carrying him - Lasat? - isn’t talking, but three others are. Cassian’s head is pounding too much to figure out if their footsteps are echoing or if there are more thugs in the party.

He can maybe handle four if he can get to a blaster after shocking the one carrying him. Any more than that, and he’s probably dead or doomed to slavery.

Kay is going to be livid. Cassian hopes, with a strength that surprises him, that he’ll be there for the droid to yell at. The idea of Kaytoo fuming by himself is deeply distressing.

That’s probably not the way he should be thinking of it. He tries to bring his mind back to the present.

Turning his shock ring around his finger isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do one-handed, but he won’t risk using both hands and alerting his captors. Finally he does it, thumbs the activation switch, and then plants his fist in the Lasat’s neck. He reaches for the guy’s blaster at the same time, wrenching it from the holster before the thug goes down.

Cassian rolls off, lands in a crouch behind an abandoned crate, stolen blaster pointed at the first enemy he can focus on. There’s a spiky black circle painted on his armor, and if it wasn’t for the adrenaline-calm, Cassian would throw up. None of the intel had suggested that Drexel was in with the Black Sun.

Regardless, Cassian shoots the gangster in the face and trains his blaster on the next.

His head clears enough to see that there are six of his captors left standing, and his stomach sinks.

_I’m sorry, Kay._

The Black Sun recover from their surprise and start shooting back. Cassian isn’t sure if they’re terrible shots or just trying to take him alive; as it is, a blaster bolt grazes his firing arm. He kills another operative, and now he’s pretty sure they’ve reclassified him from merchandise to enemy.

A tall shadow appears behind the gangsters. Cassian’s heart leaps.

K-2SO’s long metal arms each grab a Black Sun by the throat and bash their skulls together with a sickening crunch, too fast for them to even cry out. The droid drops the bodies and easily picks up a third gangster. Even fighting for his life, the thug hasn’t got a chance against Kaytoo’s durasteel and hydraulic limbs, and he makes a decent meat shield against the last two shooters. He throws the dying man at them with force, knocking them to their feet, and then plucks a blaster from the ground. Two precise headshots finish them off, and a third neutralizes the moaning Lasat. It’s all over in a matter of seconds. He turns to Cassian.

“Are you injured?” the droid asks.

There’s heat in Cassian’s face and chest; the efficient brutality with which Kaytoo’s combat programming moves him through space really shouldn’t be quite so attractive.

It definitely shouldn’t be heartwarming.

Cassian shakes his head.

“Drugged?”

The spy shrugs. “It’s wearing off.”

Blood-spattered durasteel hands wrap carefully around Cassian’s elbows and help him to his feet, more gentle than anything made of metal should be.

His voice, by contrast, is scathing.

“I told you you needed backup.” He gives Cassian a once-over despite his protests, glaring when he finds the blaster burn.

"It's just a graze," Cassian says. Kaytoo makes a disgusted noise and starts herding him back towards the ship.

Joy buzzes bright in Cassian’s chest. He doesn’t even mind that he has to concentrate not to fall over and land in something vile.

“What kind of spy goes in alone when he could have backup?”

Cassian is grinning. “You were right.”

“ _So_ glad almost getting kidnapped has helped you see sense,” Kaytoo seethes. “All your training, all my strategic and tactical analysis, all of it says: _don’t go in alone!_ I am so fed up with your stupid, unnecessary risks and are you smiling?” Kay has noticed. “Of course you’re smiling. Ass.” The dryness turns bitter. “Cassian Andor is never happy unless he’s miserable or almost dead.”

Guilt spikes through Cassian. “I’m sorry, Kay.” He puts a hand on his friend’s arm. “I’m just so glad you found me in time.”

Kay looks down at him, then jerks his gaze away. “I’d say you could repay me by never doing something that stupid again, but we both know that’s not going to happen.”

Cassian wishes he had something to say to that. They walk in silence.

Back on the U-wing, Kaytoo sits Cassian down on his berth and unceremoniously shoots him in the neck with a broad-spectrum antidote from the first aid kit.

“Don’t move,” he warns, and disappears. A moment later he’s back with electrolyte-laced water.

“Drink.”

Cassian obeys, and then finally vomits into the sick bag Kaytoo has waiting. He feels a bit better once the convulsions have stopped, if wrung-out.

Kaytoo hands him the water again. Cassian sips. It sloshes uncomfortably in his stomach and he decides to wait before drinking more. He turns the canteen over in his hands.

There's a feeling building in Cassian's chest. It's not the slow acid burn of regret or the fire of anger or even the electricity of desire.

His eyes land on one of his many scars, the vibroblade slash across his thumb that Kay had sewed up for him on Corellia. The thing in his chest unwinds.

“I’m sorry I’m not as good a friend as you are to me." He's still staring at the canteen, though he can feel Kaytoo looking at him. “There’s a lot of ways I don’t mind failing if it means I can do more for the Rebellion, but that’s not one of them.” He takes another sip. The water isn't sitting quite so badly, now. Kaytoo is still silent while Cassian drinks a little more.

He’s almost convinced that his friend just isn’t going to reply, but then Kay speaks.

“It’s not that I don’t mind you flinging yourself into danger,” he says, and Cassian finally meets his eyes. “Because I mind it a lot. But, and I say this with reservation because it will probably lead to you being even more insufferable, somehow you manage to make up for it.”

Wearily, Cassian smiles. Kaytoo holds his gaze, and then takes the canteen from him and sets it on the decking. A metal hand - the blood on it now oxidizing into green and brown - takes Cassian by the shoulder and gently but inexorably pushes him to the mattress.

“Now sleep, you idiot.”

Cassian closes his eyes and smiles.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut!

After a TIE squadron surprises them at a random jump point, Cassian and Kaytoo flee to a sparsely-populated moon. For once their luck holds and the Empire doesn't find them.

The sub-light engines are less lucky. Even after working all afternoon to repair the laser fire damage, they're still not finished as evening is gathering.

Cassian sighs. “We’ll be done tomorrow, I think. I’ll try the starboard one to make sure it works.”

He gets into the cockpit, starts the engine, and Kaytoo takes readings. The repairs are about as sound as they could be without the resources of a hangar, he decides. He goes inside to give Cassian the details. Cassian sighs, nods, cuts the engines. Kaytoo nudges him in the direction of food.

At some point while Cassian shuffles through rations, a susurrus of tiny clicks and squeaks begins to filter through the ship. Kaytoo starts making predictions on what could be causing it. Cassian’s just chosen a meal packet when he finally looks up, frowning.

“What’s that sound?”

“Local fauna,” Kaytoo shrugs.

Still frowning, Cassian picks up his rifle. “I’m going to check it out.”

Kaytoo sighs. “Of course you are.”

He lets Cassian go alone, but watches his thermal signature through the cockpit window. The man walks a few meters from the ship to get a better view, rushes towards the back of the ship once he does, then comes tromping back up the ramp.

“There’s a swarm of silk bats on the engines, but they aren’t doing any damage. I’ve heard they like electromagnetic signatures.”

Before, K-2SO would have said something dry and bored and continued the job of making Cassian meet his physical needs.

“So they’re just...crawling on the ship?”

Cassian nods, goes back to the food. Kaytoo wonders.

“Hm. I’m going to make sure they aren’t emitting anything harmful.”

Cassian shrugs.

Kaytoo leaves the ship, and sure enough, hundreds of soft-furred flying mammals have formed a living blanket on the engines. K-2SO examines them with all the spectra he has available, and determines that while they’re trapping and creating heat, the temperature is within parameters.

He steps a little closer. A few of the creatures notice him and flutter away. One whooshes past Kay’s head, its long silken tail just brushing his plating. Kaytoo remains still, and the creature returns, makes a few more passes, and flits to rest on his shoulder. It perches on him with tiny legs and the thumbs of its webbed wings. The entire animal, wing membranes included, is covered in thick downy hair. Large eyes regard him, and the wide mouth of needle-sharp teeth chitters at him.

Soon more silk bats follow. They perch on his shoulders, upper back, hip joints, anything vaguely horizontal, and then grasp his crevices with their tiny claws and hang upside-down from the rest of him. There’s at least one on top of Kaytoo’s head. He cups his hands, and two land on his palms while a few more hang from his finger joints. He waves off the one that tries to land on his face.

K-2SO looks around. Cassian is still in the ship.

Kaytoo turns on the hedonic processor. The shifting weight of the creatures on his arms becomes a pleasant background buzz.

The two in his hands are restless, and as they crawl in circles over his palms, the tiny sharp points of their claws send staccato electricity through his components. Their long tails swish against Kaytoo’s wrist joints and the backs of his hands, and he lets out a small noise of surprise.

He takes a step, and dozens of silken wings flutter around and against him. Silky wingtips and tails brush both his hands from all directions, and suddenly the tingling compels him to squirm away. His vocabulator is making a new sound, a high-pitched stuttering that he can’t seem to control. Strangely, it isn’t unpleasant, so he lets it happen. When the bats settle down and the feeling stops, he even takes another step to repeat the cycle.

“Kay, are you alright?”

Cassian is suddenly no longer on the ship. His blaster is in his hand and he’s looking at the silk bats with apprehension. “Your vocabulator’s never made that sound before and...” He trails off, eyes darting all over Kaytoo and his passengers. His frown changes from worried to confused. “Kay, are you...giggling?”

The joy of new sensations - and of sharing them with Cassian - overcomes Kaytoo's strategic processes. “It tickles!”

“What do you mean?” And now Cassian’s frown is both worried and confused, and Kaytoo is already regretting his outburst. “How is that even possible?”

Kaytoo freezes. He’d never meant for Cassian to find out like this. Now he’s standing there covered in bats and failing even more than usual to think of a good lie.

The droid shakes himself and emits a grating note too high for humans to hear. The bats, even the ones on the ship, leave in a cloud.

The sudden silence roars.

“Kay? What aren’t you telling me?” Cassian’s using the tone of voice that means there are terrible hypotheticals unfolding in his mind.

Kaytoo’s eyes dart everywhere but his friend’s face. “I, um.”

Cassian steps closer, within easy reach. “If something's wrong, at least let me try to help.”

Kaytoo sees Cassian’s confusion, worry, and unhappiness about being left in the dark; he can’t tell how much of it is good news.

If it were anyone else...well, K-2SO doesn’t know what he’d do, since he’s still a terrible liar, but. It’s not anyone else. It’s Cassian.

He decides to risk it. “I installed a new processor.”

There's a subtle but significant tightening of Cassian’s jaw; he's apprehensive but reserving judgement. He opens his mouth to respond but Kaytoo barrels on.

“Hedonic. I’ve had it for several weeks now.” Cassian's jaw snaps shut. He stands there looking up, searching Kaytoo’s face or waiting for more information, giving no clues about what’s going on in his head, and Kaytoo finds himself filling the silence.

“It’s honestly amazing, getting a new dimension of sensation, especially when I keep getting surprises, like the tickling or orgasms,” and here Cassian makes a choking sound, that can't be good, Kaytoo shouldn’t talk about that, “I tried to experience tickling before but I couldn’t, is that because you can’t do it to yourself? And it’s been very difficult not to say anything,” he continues, expressions chasing each other across Cassian’s face as he tries to keep up with Kay's revelations, “but I’m already an outlier and this, I knew this would just make that worse, and it is worse in some ways, I want to feel everything and I want to touch you most of all,” no no no why did he say that, “and I know I’m risking reprogramming but--”

“No one’s reprogramming you,” Cassian interrupts, other reactions overridden.

“If I were organic I’d reprogram me,” Kaytoo says. “Even the astromech who helped me thought I was a freak.”

“No one is going to reprogram you,” Cassian says again, more forcefully. “Do you really think that I would do that to you?”

Kaytoo sees the tightness around Cassian’s eyes, hears the pain in his voice, and it calms him when his own mortification hasn't. He sighs, spreads his hands. “No, the likelihood of you personally taking that action is infinitesimal, it’s just...what happens to aberrant droids.”

“It’s not going to happen to you,” Cassian says tightly, and grabs Kaytoo’s hand to drive his point home. “I won’t let anyone erase you, Kay.”

“Oh,” K-2SO says, faintly. “Good.”

If he sounds stunned, it’s because he hasn’t turned off the hedonic processor.

Cassian’s hand is warm and dry, gripping Kaytoo’s as firmly as a human can without harm, and Kaytoo can feel his pulse, the softness of his flesh. He closes his fingers slowly, so slowly, and delights when his fingertips come to rest on his friend’s skin. “Cassian.”

Cassian blinks, glances down at their clasped hands, and then his eyes widen. His voice is tentative. “You’re...using it now?”

“Yes.”

Cassian takes half a step back.

Kaytoo desperately doesn’t want him to pull away. “You feel good.”

Cassian sucks in a breath and bites his lip, but he doesn’t move. He doesn't look away, either, and Kaytoo begins to process something like hope.

Slowly Kaytoo brings his free hand up, near Cassian’s face, close enough to detect his body heat. Cassian blinks like he sometimes does when he isn’t letting himself look at something, and still he doesn’t move.

Kaytoo reaches forward the final centimeter and traces his fingertips over Cassian’s cheekbone, thumb across his jaw. Cassian’s eyes flutter, and he leans forward maybe a degree or two, increasing the pressure and sensation.

Kaytoo wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't even realize he’s doing it.

It doesn’t matter. The touch is good, it’s wonderful, the warmth and softness and life, and more than all of those, that it’s Cassian. That Cassian is letting Kaytoo touch him. All of the droid's systems are racing, and no matter what the odds tell him is the likely outcome of this, he can't stop the joy pulsing through his circuits.

His hand finishes its slow sweep across Cassian’s cheek. If he had a mouth, now would be when Kaytoo would lean down to press it to Cassian’s. Instead he rests the pads of three fingers on his lips. Those are dry too, like his hands, and soft, softer than any other part of his body that Kaytoo has yet touched.

“Cassian,” Kaytoo whispers, fervent.

His eyes widen, pupils visibly dilating, and Kaytoo’s processes are going so fast that the moment draws out, time lengthening, and he can reflect that it's the best thing he’s ever seen, the instant in which Cassian’s want becomes too great to hide. The precise millisecond in which Kaytoo is sure he’s wanted.

The next moment is better still. Kaytoo can perceive the tiny shifts in Cassian’s posture, the minute changes in his expression, the increase of his heart rate; it’s every part of him surrendering to desire as his eyelids slide halfway closed and he starts kissing Kaytoo’s fingers.

Cassian lets the blaster slide to the ground. With his free hand he slowly turns Kaytoo’s to the side, following with his lips, kissing his way down to the metal palm. Each press of his lips leaves blooms of pleasure in Kaytoo’s sensors that layer over one another, burying him in it, making him wonder if Cassian is deliberately trying to overwhelm him or if he just wants his mouth on Kay's hand that badly. Either way, he’s generating enough data to crowd out Kaytoo’s awareness of anything else.  

Kaytoo lets go of his other hand to cup Cassian’s jaw, fingers pushing into the silk of his hair. A half-voiced hitch of breath in Cassian’s throat sends fire through Kaytoo’s systems, Cassisn's pulse racing hot under Kay's touch.

Cassian makes sure to kiss every part of Kaytoo’s palm before starting on his thumb, lips parting slightly, breath curling warmly across his plating. The condensation doesn’t bother Kaytoo, thanks to his hands being watertight, and he doesn’t move, doesn’t think about moving, doesn’t think about anything besides the person in front of him and the sensations between them.

After Cassian has kissed each segment, he takes the tip of Kaytoo’s thumb lightly between his teeth and drags his tongue across it in a deliciously hot, slick feeling that hits all of Kay’s processors at once. He didn’t realize any feeling like that even existed, let alone was something he could experience.

Kaytoo also didn’t realize he moaned. Maybe that’s the noise he’d made in the oil bath.

He isn’t embarrassed now, though, because the sound ignites something in Cassian: he makes an answering noise low in his throat, pulls Kaytoo’s thumb deeper into his mouth, and starts to suck. The warmth and wet softness of Cassian is nothing like anything Kaytoo’s ever felt before, and already he knows he wants to do this over and over, as much as possible.

“Yes, Cassian, oh, it’s good, please, more,” Kay finds himself babbling.

Cassian opens his eyes long enough to give Kay a scorching look, lips still wrapped around the base of his thumb, and moves the droid’s other hand from his hair to his waist. Yanking his shirt up, he guides metal fingers to the bare skin of his torso, shivering slightly at their cool touch before leaning into them fully. His skin is softer under his clothes, habitually more protected, and Kaytoo revels in the feel of it, and of breath moving through Cassian's body, and of being so close to his friend.

No, he thinks. That designation isn’t really appropriate any more, given their current situation. Lover?

A moment later Cassian pulls off of Kaytoo, still holding his wrist, and nods over his shoulder. When he speaks, his voice is low, rough, breathy. “Let’s go inside.”

Yes. Lover.

Even as Cassian scoops up his weapon and boards the U-wing, he doesn’t let go of Kay’s hand. Kaytoo is soaring, practically drunk on pleasure, and barely has the presence of mind to seal the ship.

Cassian looks Kaytoo up and down like he's planning an op. It isn't the first time, but it is the first time with the goal of fitting their bodies together, and the feel of Cassian’s resourcefulness trained on their shared pleasure is electric. “Sit there on the deck. Legs out straight.”

Kaytoo obliges, still stunned that this is happening at all.

Cassian shucks off his upper clothing efficiently, and then stands over Kaytoo for a moment, hand cupping the droid’s face. Even looking up into the care and desire in Cassian’s eyes, Kaytoo can’t help but notice the rest of him - lithe chest and arms, trim waist, a trail of dark hair leading downward, phallus not quite fully hard.

He’s been noticing all of Cassian for a long time, now.

“I never thought you’d find me arousing,” the droid admits. “It goes against all my projections.”

Cassian laughs, once, and then kneels down to kiss Kaytoo’s face. He doesn’t have pressure sensors there, but he doesn’t need them to feel the affection of the gesture.

“Me either, but then you got jealous of Maz Kanata and once I started thinking about it...” Cassian straddles Kaytoo’s lap to look him in the eye, their height difference mostly in the droid’s legs, and guides a metal hand to his thigh. “I couldn’t really stop.”

“Oh,” Kaytoo murmurs. The idea that Cassian’s been thinking about him like this sends a triumphant thrill through his systems.

His sensors register the wiry strength of Cassian’s thighs, the tension in them as he shifts his weight to take Kaytoo’s other hand - the one he hasn’t kissed yet - and brings it to his lips. Cassian gives it the same thorough attention, and Kaytoo moans again.

Now Cassian nudges Kaytoo’s free hand all over his body - up his thigh, back to squeeze the delicious firmness of his ass, up the lean muscle and delicate bones of his spine, across his chest. Kaytoo’s fingers brush a nipple, and Cassian moans around metal fingers. Kaytoo has to turn the hedonic processor down to twenty percent intensity to prolong the experience.

“Like this?” Kaytoo asks, and repeats the motion. Cassian hums in affirmation.

Kay toys with his nipples for a while, and then he starts exploring again. Now he trails his hand down his lover’s chest, enjoying the novelty of hair and skin, and can’t help but continue down over ribs and abdomen. He hesitates for a moment with his hand on Cassian’s stomach, and then moves down to cup his erection.

Cassian gasps, leans back, frees his mouth. Kaytoo pulls his hand back.

“Was that bad?” Kay asks apprehensively.

Cassian shakes his head. “No, it was good. Too good to last.” He takes a few breaths, face slipping into planning mode again. “Since we’re taking a break I’ll go get something.”

The last thing Kaytoo wants is for Cassian to move. He settles both hands on his lover's hips, fingers spread firmly. “Whatever it is, we don’t need it.”

Cassian gives him an unimpressed look. “We do if you don’t want my human moisture all over you.”

The idea is...bizarrely inoffensive, but still unhealthy, so Kaytoo sighs and lets go. Cassian kisses his forehead as he stands up. K-2SO is gratified to see that he’s swaying slightly as he walks.

Cassian digs a small packet out of his satchel and returns to Kaytoo’s lap, smiling when durasteel fingertips brush hair out of his eyes. In response he kisses the hand and guides it down to his fly.

The heat pooled there must make it a relief when Kay very carefully opens his lover’s pants.

Cassian has a hand on Kaytoo’s shoulder now - for balance, maybe - and Kaytoo pulls his lover's underwear down until his genitalia are exposed. The flushed skin is a shade darker than the rest of him, and there’s a slow trickle of fluid leaking from the tip.

“Ah. Yes. Moisture.” He runs his thumb up the underside of Cassian’s erection, more than gratified at the near-desperate noise it elicits and marveling at the texture. “You have a prophylactic?”

Nodding, Cassian opens the packet and rolls the condom on, only a little clumsy with lust. “There.” He caresses Kaytoo’s arm. Now you can touch me.”

Kaytoo looks at Cassian’s cock, then his face.

“My data is rather sparse in this department,” Kaytoo admits. “Show me what you like.”

Lips twitching, Cassian takes Kaytoo’s hand and curls it carefully around his dick. “A little tighter. There,” he half-sighs, “Yes. Now pull up slowly - yes, ah, good - and then twist back down. Fuck, Kay, that’s good.” He guides Kaytoo through a few more strokes, hips rocking up in counterpoint, before letting go to find his lover’s other hand.

Then he brings the durasteel hand to his lips again, drags his tongue across the palm, and swallows two of Kay’s fingers. As he sucks and laves them, little moans and gasps escape, and again the sensations send a cascade of quivering electricity through Kaytoo's systems.

Kay works Cassian’s cock, drinking in all the noises and motions the human makes as much as the rolling heat and pressure, and wishes he had other sets of hands to caress Cassian’s chest and knead his ass and nestle in his hair at the nape of his neck. He wants to touch all of Cassian at once, all the time, hedonic processor or not.

Cassian’s hips are starting to stutter. He pulls his mouth off Kaytoo’s fingers with a shallow gasp, puts a hand on Kay’s chest plating. “Close,” he breathes, and Kaytoo can see it, the way he's riding his own wave about to crest and break.

The hedonic processor, turned to maximum intensity, brings Kaytoo close to the same point.

Cassian moans, fingers clenching on Kaytoo’s wrist, his shoulder, thrusting his cock over and over into Kaytoo’s waiting fist. His eyes are open but they’re so clouded with lust K-2SO has no idea if he actually sees anything at the moment. The sight fuels his own pleasure, and he thinks he might be close.

If there’s a next time, Kaytoo promises himself, he’ll record the experience so he can replay it whenever he wants to.

The fail-safe shuts down the processor, and all the tactile pleasure ceases, lost as abruptly as oxygen from an airlock. Kay moans in frustration and reactivates the processor, but the layers of data and feedback are gone. The pleasure is back to baseline.

Cassian thrusts a final time before going rigid, orgasm wringing a deep moan from him, sound vibrating through the digits in his mouth, his cock pulsing in Kaytoo’s hand. Even knowing that the sensory experience would be much better if the processor hadn’t shut down, Kaytoo feels a deep satisfaction with Cassian’s pleasure. With holding him through it. With knowing he had caused it.

Cassian collapses against Kay’s chest, just clings for a few moments. After his breathing has steadied, he murmurs into Kaytoo’s neck. “Did you...”

“Orgasm? No.” Kaytoo says it gently. “It shuts off after fifteen minutes, and even though I turned it back on it takes time to build up to the same levels.”

Cassian takes a few more breaths. “Can I do anything for you?”

Arms wrapped gently around his lover’s bare skin, Kaytoo shakes his head. “Not right now.”

Cassian is content to rest there for long minutes, even after removing and tying off the condom.

“I will concede that was a good idea,” Kaytoo says. “This moment would be considerably less nice if it involved cleaning your fluids out of my hip joints.”

Cassian chuckles. The vibrations travel through both their bodies. “Glad you see it my way.”

Kaytoo snorts. “Only when you’re right. Don’t think I’m going to start agreeing with your terrible ideas just because the sex is good.”

“I’d be disappointed if you did,” Cassian murmurs, smile audible.

Kaytoo strokes Cassian’s hair. This is much better than he’d expected it to end. He tries to enjoy it, but his analytic processes won’t deactivate.

“You’re not going to say something idiotic about spies needing to be free of personal attachments?” he finally says. “Because I'd rather get it over with.”

Cassian stills for a moment before his hand comes up to trace the seams in Kay's face.

“I've been telling myself that for a long time,” he says quietly. “I don't think it worked.”

Kaytoo is doing a bad job of not getting his hopes up. To compensate he puts more effort into skepticism. “So you’re just going to...accept happiness? That’s uncharacteristically sensible of you. It makes me nervous.”

Cassian huffs a laugh into Kay's neck. “If it makes you feel better, I could talk about all the new problems we’re going to have.”

It’s probably indicative of his deviance, but Cassian’s presumption of shared difficulties soothes Kaytoo’s fears more than any grand declarations possibly could.

“Please spare me your attempt at analysis.”

“I’m rolling my eyes at you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The amazing and talented Clawsou made some wonderful [art](http://clawsou.com/post/160304070197/i-have-so-many-feels-now-this-is-tribute-to-this) for this story! Go look and shower her in praise.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More smut!

Cassian wakes without any need to move. He feels his body more than usual: how his breath moves through him, the texture of the bedding pressing into his skin, the pull of gravity on his mass. Maybe it’s just that he feels relaxed and closer to refreshed than he’s been in ages. He lies there for what feels like a long time before he remembers.

_“Cassian,” Kaytoo whispers, fingers on the human’s lips. Cassian knows that’s where the droid’s most finely-calibrated sensors are - recognizes it as a kiss - and that little bit of pressure cracks him open all the way to the center of his desire. It isn’t a decision when he kisses Kay back._

The rest of it, though - or at least everything after they were back on the ship - that was a decision. Cassian could have locked himself in the refresher and jerked off alone. Maybe after that he would have had enough control to lie to Kay, tell him it was all a mistake.

But what would have been the point? He’s been compromised for a long time, regardless of his actions, so he might as well give in and take some good with the bad.

And it had been very, very good.

_The lights of Kaytoo’s eyes shine brightly into Cassian’s as the droid watches him intently, and the attention is as affecting as the cool hand on his cock and the long, hard fingers in his mouth. Cassian feels his climax approaching and regrets the end, wants to draw it out, but he can’t stop himself from thrusting or sucking or drinking in Kay’s moans. He comes like that, his lover’s hands on and in him, and when he slumps forward, spent, Kay’s metal embrace feels like home._

Just one flash of memory has started getting him hard again. Focusing on his breathing in an attempt to reverse his arousal, Cassian laughs at himself and how much he still wants Kaytoo, even the morning after.

Even as he can hardly believe they had sex.

He’s heard stories. Rumors. Seen advertisements for very specific holoporn. But never personally knew anyone who’d admitted to fucking a non-pleasure droid. Never thought he himself would. It’s like discovering he’s a different person than he’d thought.

Cassian flushes with sudden guilt. Kaytoo’s synthetic nature has never been a problem for him - on the contrary, has often been something he values in their friendship. The shit other organics give him never makes him think otherwise. It only bothers him because of their devaluation of Kay, not because they think less of Cassian.

There’s nothing strange or wrong about sex between synthetics and organics, and he hates that he thought so even as a reflex.

Finally Cassian gets out of bed and washes up. He almost wishes that they didn’t have to keep it secret, what they are to each other; maybe it would change what people thought about droids.

But he won’t endanger Kay like that. If the droid making his own choices risks a memory wipe, a relationship with an intelligence officer virtually guarantees it. Kaytoo hadn’t been wrong to keep the modification a secret.

_“I installed a new processor,” Kay says, and a hundred questions jam Cassian’s throat: What kind of processor? When did it happen? How long has his friend been different and why didn’t he notice? Does this explain the jealousy? Are there more potential changes in the droid’s personality? What drove Kaytoo to do it? Where did he get it? Did he test it for problems first? Could someone have sabotaged it? Could the modification somehow allow the old Imperial coding to reassert itself and destroy both of them? Worse, was he going to helplessly watch Kay lose himself?_

He tries to shake off the worries, grabs a ration bar, and leaves his quarters. The ship is open to the morning and Kaytoo isn’t on board.

Cassian finds him at the edge of the clearing under a tree, petting the moss growing on its trunk. The droid snatches his hand away when he sees the human’s approach, but then seems to remember Cassian already knows and resumes his tactile exploration.

It’s still strange to see Kaytoo being interested in softness, and Cassian isn’t sure he likes it.

“You slept well and are eating without being reminded,” Kay says, dryly gratified. “Do orgasms typically reduce your idiocy?”

Cassian laughs.

* * *

Fixing the engines on the second day is almost exactly the same as it had been on the first. The difference is that when Kaytoo passes him a tool, or leans close to look at something in tight quarters, the touches linger. When they sit on a low boulder to take a break, Cassian eats his lunch leaning against Kay, one of the droid’s long arms around his shoulders.

They finish the repairs in mid-afternoon. After the final engine test, they strap into the cockpit and prime the thrusters.

Cassian doesn’t initiate liftoff. Kaytoo doesn’t prompt him.

He's still staring at the console, trying to either get off the ground or figure out why the hell he hasn’t yet, when Kaytoo brushes a finger across Cassian’s cheek.

Kay is looking at him like he’s cataloging the sight of Cassian, like simply looking is a worthwhile activity. Cassian feels no pressure to say or do anything, and he just looks back for a long moment, doing some cataloging of his own.

Kaytoo caresses his face again, a little slower this time, and Cassian smiles. Before Kay pulls his hand all the way back, Cassian leans into it and plants a kiss on the droid’s fingers. Kaytoo hums once, pleased, and without words they pick up the takeoff sequence where they left off.

* * *

Kaytoo brings the U-wing into the hangar and Cassian takes a deep breath. Tries to forget the sex and the soft touches. Prepares to impersonate his past self.

“You’re too limber,” Kaytoo comments as he shuts down the engines. “You’re normally a lot more tense after a mission. Can’t you tighten your jaw some more?”

Cassian snorts, wipes his hand over his eyes. “Thanks.”

“Maybe thinking about something unpleasant will help.”

The spy huffs a laugh. “Yeah. Those TIE fighters. Getting shot at always stresses me out.”

“That’s the spirit.” Kaytoo shuts down the console. Cassian buries his tenderness under layers of fear and regret and unseals the ship.

He hands the transport off to the repair techs, grabs the data they’d been sent to get in the first place, and goes in for debrief. It only lasts a few minutes longer than it would have without the TIE attack, and it’s easy to act as if nothing has changed.

Well, when Kaytoo isn’t around, that is. As the days wear on, Cassian’s feelings get harder to ignore.

The droid's never bothered with the mess, and it’s too risky to meet in the Captain’s quarters, so those are two places Cassian is safely lonely. But the corridors, the hangars, the Intelligence center, the training facilities - he and Kay share space often, and Cassian discovers that it’s possible to miss someone while standing right next to them.

Meanwhile, his doubts about the hedonic processor gnaw at him. Kaytoo answered most of his questions while they were in hyperspace, but he couldn’t give any certainty about long-term effects.

He decides he needs to gather some intel of his own.

* * *

One favor called in and two degrees of separation later, Cassian is looking at the blue holo of a middle-aged female human. Jastha Oldin has gray streaks in her dark hair, smile lines well-worn into her face, and arms that look like they could twist the dome off an astromech.

“Hello, Ms. Oldin. I’m a friend of Ran Chinelo. They said you’re an expert in unusual droid modifications.”

“How is old Ran? I haven’t seen them in ages,” the woman replies.

“They seemed all right. Had a couple of kids hanging around.”

“Aww, I bet they were adorable,” Jastha says with a fond smile.

Cassian shrugs. “I’m not really a kid person.”

The woman laughs. “Fair enough. What can I do for you?”

The spy slips into a neutral mask. “Do you know much about hedonic processors?”

There’s a pause as Jastha’s eyes widen and then narrow, examining Cassian much more closely than before, and then she nods.

Cassian takes a breath. It’s a secure connection that he encrypted himself, using his own transmitter, from the roof of one of the auxiliary buildings of the Rebel base. He’s set up a proximity alarm surrounding him. No one is going to overhear their conversation.

It still sets him on edge to say out loud.

“Do you know what might happen if one was installed in a security droid?”

Jastha raises an eyebrow. “Quite a lot might happen, depending, and the range of possibilities is huge with context that vague.”

Cassian is quiet for a moment. Jastha waits, unimpressed by his reticence. He sighs.

“My...friend is a reprogrammed, independent KX. He installed a hedonic processor a few weeks ago, but he doesn’t know if there will be long-term effects. I’m concerned.”  

“A KX. Wow. I bet that’s a story,” she says, speculatively. “Have you noticed any changes in his behavior?”

Cassian is glad that the monochrome holo will hide the heat in his face.

“Well, he likes to pet soft things now. And has been making organic-like noises. Giggling,” _moaning, gasping,_ he thinks, “that sort of thing.”

“Those are both pretty normal, especially with it being so new,” she says. “Anything resembling addiction?”

Cassian shakes his head. “He added a failsafe that shuts it off after a time limit.”

“That was cautious of him,” Jastha says approvingly, “but I meant, has he been secretive of the way he spends his time, or have you found him sneaking off to pet things, or neglecting important tasks in favor of using the processor?”

Cassian frowns. “No.”

Jastha smiles. “Then I don’t think you need to worry. I’d stay alert for drastic behavior changes, but it sounds like the hedonic processor is well-integrated into your friend’s overall system.”

Cassian nods, still frowning. “Do you think there could be any side effects? Viruses he’ll be more vulnerable to? Corruption to his core programs?”

Oldin shakes her head. “Core corruption would be a very weird glitch, and if it hasn’t happened already it’s not going to.”

The knot that’s been sitting in Cassian’s stomach for days finally loosens.

“As for other side effects, probably not. I could be more definitive if I could talk to him, and ideally I’d run a diagnostic myself.”

Arms crossed over his chest, Cassian bites his lip. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Even if he doesn’t want me to do that,” Oldin continues, “do you think he’d be interested in meeting another combat series with the same mod? I know a guy.”

“He might,” Cassian answers, oddly heartened by the idea.

“You’re both invited,” she smiles. “If this KX trusts you enough to use the processor in front of you, that’s good enough for me.”

“Thank you,” Cassian says, surprised by how much he means it.

* * *

The machining room, just off the hangar, is where the Rebellion custom-makes the more fiddly parts for its spacecraft. It’s occupied nearly constantly, has people coming and going at odd hours, and is loud.

It also has a corridor lined with store rooms whose doors can be locked with the right security device. Three of these are frequently used, but the last is the catch-all for miscellany and potential salvage. Cassian waits there pretending to take inventory.

The door swishes open, swirling some dust from the floor, and Kaytoo fills the doorway. He has to duck a little to enter, and then Cassian is slicing the door’s console.

“Hi,” he says, smiling. The droid’s face is in shadow, backlit by the room’s single light, but it doesn’t detract from how glad Cassian is to see him.

“Hello, Cassian,” Kay answers, and cups the human’s face with both hands. His hum is part pleasure, part relief. “It’s harder not to touch you than before. Is it because now I know what I’m missing?”

“Maybe,” Cassian answers, leaning into the touch and stroking Kay’s wrists. “Maybe it’s because we know the other wants it, too.”

“Mm,” Kay agrees, and starts stroking Cassian’s bottom lip with his thumb. Cassian enjoys it for a moment before he can’t resist and lets his lips part, darts his tongue out to taste durasteel.

“Oh,” Kay murmurs, and Cassian can hear his lover’s cooling fans spin faster. The man grins up at him, wickedly, and nudges Kaytoo until he’s standing next to a broken energy cell. Cassian steps up onto it, his eyes only a little below Kay’s, and presses his chest against the droid’s. His pulse quickens.

“You like soft things, right?” he says, taking Kay’s hand and guiding it to his hip. One-handed, he undoes his belt.

“All of you is comparatively soft,” Kaytoo observes, but if he’s going for deadpan he misses the mark, too obviously delighted. Cassian’s lips curve up and he pushes Kay’s quickly-warming hand down to curve around his ass.

“Some parts are softer than others.”

Kay slips his other hand down Cassian’s pants. Slowly the droid kneads his muscles, hard fingers firmly squeezing and pushing and pulling at his flesh, and it goes straight to Cassian’s cock.

“Fuck, Kay,” he says, half a gasp. He grinds against Kaytoo’s pelvic cradle, smearing precome all over his underwear and not caring. “You’re really good at that for your second time.”

“I’m simply trying to feel you as much as possible,” Kay says, and he pulls Cassian up by the ass until only his toes are on the energy cell, the concentration of his weight on Kay’s hands multiplying the pleasure. Cassian groans with it, eyes fluttering, and mouths at the rim of Kaytoo’s neck well, wishing there were more sensors there.

“How do you come?” he whispers, machine oil sharp on his tongue. “I want to give that to you.”

A shudder runs through Kaytoo’s body.

“The oil bath after the sandstorm,” he says, and slowly sets Cassian back on the fuel cell. He leaves one hand to continue massaging the human’s ass, lets the other one travel up under his shirt, caressing stomach and ribs and muscle, then bringing it out and up to trace skin-warm fingertips across Cassian’s collarbone and throat. The man tilts his head back in offering, eyes drifting shut.

“It was...enveloping, warm, slick. The motion of the liquid also contributed.”

Kay wraps his hand very briefly, very lightly around his throat. It sends a white-hot flash of need through Cassian, and he moans.

Kaytoo mirrors the sound. His hand stutters on Cassian’s shoulder.

“I think I could orgasm in other ways, too,” he continues, vocabulator wavering. “Touching you brought me close. It’s just that the time limit makes it difficult.”

Cassian hums, nods, finds Kaytoo’s arm without looking. He caresses the narrow limb and lets his hands drift to the smooth wrist joints.

“Warm and slick and enveloping, hm?” he muses, and opens his eyes. Kaytoo is staring at him again. Cassian’s breath hitches. “Do you think doing that to just your hands would work?” He rubs his cheek on Kay’s knuckles.

“Yes, probably,” Kay says.

Cassian keeps nuzzling.

Kaytoo’s voice becomes annoyed. “Are you going to suck me or not?”

Cassian grins. “Yeah. I have another idea too, but it will have to wait.”

“Tease. You know I hate waiting for information,” Kaytoo starts to complain. “You’re so...oh... _Cassian._ ”

He's drawn the tips of two metal fingers into his mouth.

Cassian swirls his tongue around and between Kay’s digits, sucking just a little, then leans forward to take them deeper. Leans back dragging his lips slowly down them. Kaytoo keeps working at Cassian’s ass, but it’s gone from methodical to erratic, cycling through kneading, caressing, barely brushing the skin. It’s less satisfying but more arousing.

Cassian’s cock is so hard now it hurts a little, aching for release, but he’s ignoring it in favor of working Kay’s sensors. Tongue undulating under and around his fingers, teeth resting on them periodically, cheeks hollowing and throat working, Cassian generates more and more pleasure in his partner, drinking in every reaction. Kaytoo is speaking in incoherent, repetitive phrases, tone all over the place, lots of vowel sounds and Cassian’s name over and over.

Kay makes a disappointed noise when he has to pull off to stop lockjaw. Cassian’s lips work Kaytoo’s palm while he rests, placating, and then he closes his mouth around the last two fingers of Kay’s hand, making up for neglect.

“Cassian, yes, good, oh!"

He smirks around the metal in his mouth. Releases it and goes for his lover’s thumb. Kaytoo’s warm, damp fingers come to rest under his jaw, on his pulse, and Cassian tightens his hand over them, presses the metal into his skin firmly. Kay’s moans are thready, now, and the man wraps his tongue as much around Kay's thumb as possible. It’s long, almost hitting the back of his throat when he pushes deeper and swallows around it.

“Cassian, Cassian, I--”

The droid freezes while all the moving parts inside him activate at once, an abrupt vibration deep enough to be a shudder. Cassian stops too, eyes darting all over, wishing he could instantly make sure Kay is alright. He manages to extricate his mouth before the shuddering stops and Kaytoo’s eyes flicker, but the immobile hand on his ass won’t let him move his hips at all.

Once he’s sure Kay is fine, Cassian will laugh about that later.

He embraces his lover while he waits for him to reboot.

Kaytoo unfreezes a system at a time. When motor control returns he wraps his arms around Cassian, stroking his hair.

“Kay? That was all supposed to happen, right?” the human asks.

Silence. Kaytoo gives a jerky nod.

Cassian feels a grin spreading across his face. “Are you speechless? I had no idea that was even possible.”

Kaytoo rolls his optics. Cassian laughs, tucks his head into the crook of Kaytoo’s neck. After a moment the soft reboot finishes.

“Thank you,” the droid murmurs into Cassian’s hair. “That was good, and I still have a few minutes to enjoy the afterglow.”

Cassian leans up to kiss Kay’s forehead.

“Now,” the droid says, tone full of intent. “Unless you object I’m going to bring you to orgasm and you’re going to tell me about this idea of yours.”

Cassian's breath catches in his throat and he fumbles in his pockets.

“Have you been carrying this around?” Kaytoo asks, taking the condom from him. He examines it for a moment, then tears it open with precision. “We only knew half an hour ago that we’d be able to meet here.”

“Yeah,” Cassian says, then moans when Kay opens his pants the rest of the way. He clutches at the droid’s shoulders. “Thought it was best to be prepared. Just in case.”

Kay hums thoughtfully, takes Cassian's cock in hand, and starts rolling the condom on. Cassian shudders, trying to wait until it’s done before grinding against Kay's hand.

“I like that,” Kaytoo admits. “I want to touch you all the time. I like that you’re always ready for me to touch you.”

Cassian swears.

Kay grasps Cassian’s ass and picks him up entirely, feet hanging in the air, and holds him close. Cassian swears again, rutting against Kaytoo as best he can when he doesn’t control any leverage. He’s been so hard for long enough that it doesn’t take much time, just sufficient friction between durasteel and his cock, just the pressure of Kay’s fingers on his ass. Their foreheads touch, the light of the droid’s eyes washing out most of the rest of Cassian’s vision, and then everything is gone in the flare of his orgasm.

“Kay!”

When the world solidifies around him again, Cassian is draped over Kaytoo, metal arms holding him up.

“Wow,” he manages.

“What was your idea?” Kay asks. “You distracted me.”

Cassian snorts. Shrugs. “I like anal penetration, if you’re interested.” It’s a lot easier to say when his brain is flooded with endorphins and his body is still loose.

There’s a pause. “That sounds...unsanitary.”

Cassian shrugs again. “Not as much as you’d think, but it’s fine if you don’t want to.” Well, it would be disappointing, but not much. Not when there are so many other ways for Kay to touch him.

Another pause. “I require more data.”

Cassian gets a mental image of Kaytoo carefully reviewing holoporn, and laughs.

“What’s funny about needing data?”

“Just, well, you have to be selective. A lot of the ‘data’ out there aren’t really accurate.”

“I know how to vet sources, Cassian. I’m not some juvenile organic pirating their parents’ holonet connection.”

Hiding his grin against Kay’s plating, Cassian nods. “Yeah, I know, sorry.”

“Hmph.” Kaytoo puts Cassian back on his own two feet, waits while the man steadies himself. Still doesn’t pull his arms away even after Cassian cleans himself up and rights his clothes.

Cassian stays leaning against Kaytoo for another long moment.

“We have to go eventually,” the droid points out. Unhappily.

“Yeah.”

Neither of them move.


	15. Chapter 15

After nine days that feel much longer, Draven finally assigns Cassian and Kaytoo a mission, and thank the Maker, it involves no other Rebels. Kaytoo manages to hide his feelings from the organics, but makes the mistake of letting his guard down in the hangar.

He really shouldn’t have been humming to himself.

«Well, you’re sickeningly cheerful,» Chopper complains as Kaytoo carries supplies to the U-wing.

Kaytoo shrugs, playing it casual. “Just glad to be getting off-base.”

The astromech gives him a look. «Yeah, I love violence too, Handsy, but you’re not the type to sing and dance about it.»

Kaytoo looks away. His gaze happens to land on Cassian talking to one of the techs.

«Oh. Ooooooh.» Chopper chuckles and waggles his antenna suggestively. «You want to get your human all alone.»

Kay jerks his eyes away from Cassian and stares straight ahead. The only good thing is that he doesn’t think anyone else was close enough to hear Chopper. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Chopper ignores the obvious lie, rolling gleefully alongside. «What is it even like? Do you make ridiculous noises like they do?»

Kaytoo is suddenly very grateful for his lack of involuntary responses like blushing or stammering. No one looking at him will be able to tell he’s embarrassed. He opts to keep walking exactly as he had been.

It only helps so much.

«Do you stare deeply into each other’s photoreceptors and talk about how much you loooooooove each other? Does he stay stoic and boring? Does he cry? Or is it all dirty talk and kinky stuff? Come on, give me something.»

Kaytoo makes several projections of smashing Chopper’s dome. Not enough to damage his core processors. Just enough to be really uncomfortable and require significant repairs.

The probable outcomes of those scenarios, he calculates, all end in him being stuck on base, so he doesn’t hit the astromech.

Even if he really, really wants to.

«How does it even work? You’d have to keep all the fluids off you or clean up after, and you have to be careful not to break him, right, they’re so squishy, and--»

“Don’t you have anyone else to harass?”

Cackling, Chopper stops and waves his pincers as Kaytoo continues on. «I never said you’d paid your price, Handsy. I’m gonna be laughing for a looooooong time. Have a nice trip!»

Kaytoo sighs.

* * *

As soon as the ship leaves atmo, Kaytoo and Cassian touch, fingers laced together when they aren’t working the console. Once they jump to hyperspace, they pull Cassian’s bedding to the floor and spend the whole of the short trip drawing pleasure from each other.

The mission itself involves Cassian gone on his own for several days, K-2SO acting as backup. The droid keeps tabs on his partner’s transponder and moves the ship around to prevent Imperial detection. It’s boring and maddening and the only thing preventing him from going to get Cassian is how dangerous blowing his cover would be.

Cassian returns earlier than expected. From the look on his face, that’s not because it was an easy mission. He avoids Kay’s eyes as he takes the ship into the sky.

It’s been a while since Kaytoo’s seen Cassian like this, and where before he would merely monitor the human’s physical needs, now Kay feels a strong urge to actively comfort. Organics crave touch, after all, and it’s been shown to speed their healing.

They make the jump to hyperspace, and Kaytoo reaches out to caress Cassian’s cheek. He doesn’t connect, though, because the human flinches away.

“Sorry, Kay. Not now.” His voice is flat, his gaze straight ahead and distant.

Kaytoo lowers his hand. The disappointment and rejection shouldn’t be as great as they are, surely; Cassian’s never liked being touched during his grim moods. Trying to get the spy to eat or sleep or perform first aid when he’s this deep inside himself is an exercise in patience and indirect causation, to the point that it’s worrying if Cassian asks for or even tolerates help with self care.

It had been irrational to think things would be different now. Kaytoo had, though. Or at least hoped.

Cassian checks the ship’s vitals one last time - unnecessarily, but it’s something he always does and Kaytoo is willing to let him - and then leaves. Kaytoo hears the shower starting up a moment later.

He sighs.

The first jump is relatively short, and they’re floating in deep space preparing to make the next one before Cassian emerges from the refresher.

He comes up beside Kaytoo’s chair, laying a hand on the droid’s shoulder.

“Hey.”

Kaytoo searches Cassian’s face. Whatever the spy did is still there, weighing him down, but now it’s buried two or three layers deep. Sometimes Kaytoo wonders how Cassian manages to carry so much. Sometimes - often - he wishes he could do the work instead, knowing it would bother him significantly less.

“Hello,” Kaytoo replies.

Cassian’s frown unbends just a little. He takes a breath.

“So, I don’t know if you would be interested, but I talked to a droid mod expert last week,” he begins. “She said you probably don’t have any long-term effects to worry about, but that she can still run a diagnostic if you want.” He pauses. “I think it would be a good idea.”

Kaytoo considers. “Agreed, assuming it’s not too far out of our way.”

Cassian relaxes the tiniest bit. Kaytoo calculates a ninety-two percent chance his partner had been prepared to argue about it.

“She also said she knows another combat droid with a hedonic processor. She invited us to Gatalenta to talk to them both.”

Surprise and delight and hope all rush unexpectedly through Kaytoo. “Yes! When can we go?”

His partner blinks, frown startled away. “You’re sure?”

“Cassian, the only reason I haven’t tried to find someone like that myself,” Kay explains, a bit impatiently, “is that the chance of success was below zero point seven percent. I hope whatever favor you called in wasn’t too valuable.”

“It wasn’t,” is the answer, and Kaytoo gives it only a thirty percent chance of being a lie.

Cassian’s face is slowly relaxing. “We can go now. Gatalenta’s nine hours away and there are two more days allotted for the mission.”

Kay surges forward, arms flung open, and Cassian’s eyes widen in reflexive panic before the droid stops his lunge mere centimeters away to wrap his arms carefully around him. Cassian is stiff against him for a moment, and then he’s returning the embrace.

“Thank you,” Kaytoo says.

Cassian huffs a laugh over his shoulder. “You’re welcome. Thanks for not crushing me.”

“I wouldn’t have crushed you.”

“Kay, you weigh three times what I do.”

He only lets go of Cassian because he needs his arms to enter the planet’s coordinates. “I was far too close to acquire the velocity necessary to crush you.”

“I think you have a different definition of ‘crush’ than I do.”

Kaytoo waits while his partner straps in and the hyperjump is calculated. “Hmm, perhaps.”

Cassian rolling his eyes is almost audible.

Kaytoo’s hand closes around the hyperthrottle. The human's fingers brush his as they work the console.

The navicomputer clicks into readiness, and Cassian smiles. “Punch it.”

* * *

They land on the outskirts of a largish village on one of the planet’s many archipelagos. Jastha Oldin’s village is a set of gently curving paths wending through shrubs with bright leaves and flowers, the occasional palm tree jutting up, houses made of natural materials tucked in among the greenery.

The woman herself waits for them by the landing pad, wearing a loose sleeveless blouse and brightly-colored sarong, brown skin showing tattoos that denote her parentage and career. Her wide face brightens into a smile when she sees them.

“Hello, Cassian,” she greets, shaking his hand. “And you must be Kay-tooesso.” She holds her hand out again.

Kaytoo looks at her. Looks at her hand. Looks briefly at Cassian, whose bland mask of a smile is showing hints of sincerity.

Jastha doesn’t pull her arm back.

Kaytoo turns on the hedonic and clasps the human’s hand. It’s warmer than Cassian’s ever is, and broad, with a strong grip. It feels nice, in a new way, and Kaytoo wonders if it would be different for every individual organic he touched or if there are simply broader categories.

The droid moves the woman’s hand up and down twice, emulating the greeting he’s seen so many organics give each other.

They exchange pleasantries and Jastha guides them away. First they come up close to a large building, high roof covered in plant fibers, some of the modular walls standing open. Kaytoo can see three collections of young organics. They’re grouped more or less by size, sitting on the floor. Most of the bigger ones have data pads and styluses.

Jastha asks the rebels to wait nearby while she goes on ahead to get her children. As they watch, two of the young get up and scamper over to Jastha. They are not, as Kaytoo had expected, human: one is a Togruta boy who doesn’t quite reach Cassian’s hip, the other a Rodian girl who came from the mid-sized group. They smile and hug Jastha, who bends down to take them into her arms.

“Huh,” says Cassian.

Jastha waves them over. “This is my daughter Yana and my son Silero,” she says. “This is Mister Kaytoo and Mister Cassian.”

“Nice to meet you, sirs,” they chorus, seemingly unphased by the sight of a 2.16 meter tall combat droid. Silero immediately starts chattering about his day. Yana is more reserved, but she chimes in every now and again.

The walk to Jastha’s home doesn’t take very long. It has a garden in front and a smaller building attached to one side.

“Go help your father with dinner,” Jastha tells the children. “Tell him we need one guest plate and a guest cable.”

“Roger roger!” Silero chirps, and darts away into the main house.

Struck by the oddness of the response, the droid glances at Cassian. The man’s slipped into his definitely-hiding-something neutral expression. Kaytoo starts making predictions.

“We have time for the diagnostic before dinner,” Jastha says, and gestures them both into the shop. It’s different from the other buildings - not built from wood and leaves, but a duraplast prefab that’s been given a facade to blend in better. When Jastha opens the door, there’s a slight depressurization, and the air inside is forty-six percent dryer than the air outdoors. A dehumidifier hums softly in one corner, and the walls and space under the workbench are filled with clear plastic storage bins of every size.

“Some people wonder how an islander like myself got to be a droid expert when it’s so much work to prevent corrosion here,” she says, sitting Kaytoo down on a step stool. “But what are we supposed to do, live without machines? Dry storage and good rustproofing seem like a small price to me.”

Kaytoo shrugs. “People make bigger accommodations for less.”

“Exactly!” Bustling about the space, she’s flicking on the wall console, taking out tools, setting out some kind of multimeter, grabbing a data pad. When everything is lined up on the workbench to her satisfaction, she stands in front of K-2SO.

“I’m going to open your head and attach the meter. Have you run some simple stimuli. From there we’ll know if there’s anything I should be looking into.”

Kaytoo nods.

Jastha begins. Her hands are steady and as careful as Cassian’s have ever been when opening Kaytoo’s plating, and despite knowing her for less than an hour he isn’t worried. Even if he were, Cassian is there with three hidden weapons and sharp-eyed observation.

Having parts of his core open to the air always makes Kaytoo nervous, especially since he has only temperature sensors there; he can neither see nor feel what’s happening. He hears Jastha’s breathing over him as she examines the hedonic processor.

“It’s not pretty, but it’s a clean install,” she says approvingly. “Looks like astromech work?”

“Yes,” Kaytoo says, and likes Jastha even more. “He was helpful but very rude.”

Cassian’s lips twitch. “Syndulla’s?”

“Indeed.”

Kaytoo hears tiny clicks as Jastha attaches the meter leads. She sits back and taps at the control box, then the datapad. “Alright, Kaytoo,” she says after a moment. “Turn it on. I want to take you through different types and intensity of stimuli.”

She has him perform the same cycle of actions - tapping the bench, squeezing a small rubber ball, resting his palm on the gentle heat of an electric blanket - at five percent intensity, then ten, then fifteen, all the way up to one hundred. It feels nice - it can’t really feel any other way - but it doesn’t overwhelm him or threaten to induce orgasm. He maintains dignity.

“The high end of the range is a little erratic,” she says, “but nothing to worry about. Just means you’ll sometimes have variable responses to the same stimuli.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed.”

Behind Jastha, Cassian shifts uncomfortably. It makes Kaytoo feel pleasantly smug.

The procedure done, Jastha closes Kaytoo up, puts her tools away, and leads them out of the shop.

The house is a smaller version of the school, leaf-fiber walls pulled aside to let in the air and give a view of a second garden. Cushions lie in a heap in one corner next to a holoprojector and a hallway leads away to other rooms. Yana has just finished setting a low table for five, though two spaces are left clear of dishes, and the sounds of Silero’s energetic chatter are coming from the doorway to the kitchen. Kaytoo hears another voice too, this one lower and tinny.

“Huh,” Kaytoo says.

Cassian raises an eyebrow but doesn’t ask.

“Please, sit,” Jastha says, ushering her guests. She gives Kaytoo the clear spot at one end of the table, Cassian the plate next to him. She fusses over them for a moment, offering cushions and a charging cable and beverages.

Silero appears, a serving plate piled with some kind of roasted vegetable, and sets it on the table. Yana follows carrying a pitcher, and behind her is a B-1 battle droid with a platter of fried fish.

He's wearing an apron.

“This is my husband, Morale,” Jastha says. “Sweetie, this is Kaytoo and Cassian.”

“Hi!” the B-1 says, putting the food down. “I'm really glad you could make it.”

“Likewise,” Kaytoo responds cheerfully.

Cassian, polite smile frozen in place, murmurs something vaguely affirmative.

The organics begin eating. The family tell their guests about Gatalentan culture and climate, probably as an educational exercise for the children as much as for the visitors’ benefit. Cassian compliments Morale’s cooking, and Kaytoo describes interesting celestial phenomena.

“Morale is an interesting name,” Cassian comments at one point. He’s using his mildly-pleasant-inquiry tone of voice.

“It was the only job I liked before homemaking,” the B-1 explains.

Cassian blinks. “The droid armies had morale officers?”

“Oh, no. I was stationed with an organic force on Mahranee, and their morale officer didn’t like most of the work, so he gave it to me instead.”

“I see,” Cassian says, a tiny, suspicious tug at his mouth indicating that he’s trying not to laugh. Only Kaytoo notices.

“He didn’t have a name when we met,” Jastha adds. “I told him about several organic naming conventions, and that’s what he picked.”

Kaytoo considers this. Calling himself anything but K-2SO hadn’t even occurred to him before. Maybe it hadn’t been a name to start with, either, but had become one when the individual it designated became a person. Maybe it always was a name, just one different from organics’. Either way, it was his, and he didn’t feel the need to change it.

It was nice to know he had the option, though.

“Tell us about you,” Morale says after Jastha shoos the children away to chores and study. “I bet your story’s really interesting.”

The rebels have prepared for this. In the edited version of his life story, Cassian is a civilian information broker who was wrongfully arrested, reprogrammed the droid as part of a desperate escape, and now travels from place to place to stay ahead of the law. It’s both practiced and close enough to the truth that Kaytoo manages to sell it.

Morale responds with his own. “I actually still have all my original programming.” He rests his elbows on the table. “When the war ended my obedience protocols became irrelevant, so I was able to escape before the Empire came to deactivate us. Then I just survived for a few years until I met Jastha.”

Jasta lays a hand on his arm. He turns to her and rests his forehead on hers for a moment.

_«Do you stare deeply into each other’s photoreceptors and talk about how much you loooooooove each other?»_

“Why did you get a hedonic processor?” Kaytoo asks.

Morale pats Jastha’s hand and turns his attention back to the other droid. “I always wanted to feel,” he says, “even before I knew it was possible. The way organics respond to stimuli has always been so interesting. Is that why you did?”

Kaytoo realizes that this wasn’t one of the questions Cassian asked him. He wonders why; the way the man has gone carefully blank again suggests it’s not because he doesn’t care about the answer.

“I started feeling like there was something missing,” Kaytoo tells Morale. “Sharing pleasure is a bonding experience for organics, and I wanted that kind of connection.” He realizes he’s looking at Cassian again.

Expression still bland, Cassian’s breath hitches almost inaudibly.

Morale sighs happily. “Oh, I love your story - he reprogrammed you for independence, you got the mod to be closer to him. Isn’t that romantic, honey?”

Jastha smiles and nods like she never expected anything else.

Cassian coughs and looks away.

Nobody speaks.

Morale glances between the rebels and folds his hands nervously. “Uh, are you not a couple? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed--”

“We’re together,” Kaytoo says, and takes Cassian’s hand.

Morale relaxes.

Cassian does a little, too. “It’s not safe for us to be open about it.”

“Of course not,” Jastha huffs. “We only get away with it here because my skills are so useful.”

“That’s not the only reason,” Morale protests. “They liked my poem.”

“And then gave the prize to your runner-up when they figured out you’re synthetic,” Jastha mutters darkly.

“Four of the sponsors protested,” the B-1 counters. “I thought that was nice.”

Cassian coughs again.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Cassian says. “Just a dry throat.” He takes a drink.

The four of them talk for hours, with only a break for Morale to put the children to bed. When he returns, he’s exchanged the apron for a plush robe. Jastha leans into his arms with a smile and invites her guests back the following day.

Tentatively accepting, Cassian and Kaytoo leave for the night.

“Why didn't you ask me why I got the processor?” Kaytoo says as soon as he closes the ship. “I know it matters to you. You reacted when I told the Oldins why.”

“I...” Cassian looks away. Shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair. Goes to clean his teeth.

Kaytoo follows, looming over the refresher’s open door. When Cassian finishes, he doesn’t leave, just leans on the sink and stares into it.

“I had a feeling what your answer would be, given your behavior lately.” He pauses, turns slightly towards Kaytoo but still doesn’t look up. “I didn't want another reminder that I can't be for you what you are for me.”

Kaytoo considers. “My desire to bond more deeply with you doesn’t indicate that. It might if it wasn’t reciprocated, but evidence supports the fact that you desire closeness with me.”

Cassian gives a weak laugh. “I think the sex probably suggests that, yeah.” He goes serious again. “It’s more than that, though. You changed yourself. You’re still you, but you’re different in a fundamental way. I can’t...” He leans against the wall, hands covering his face. “I can’t change for you, Kay. And I can’t put you first.” His hands slip down, and finally he looks at Kaytoo. “You deserve better than that.”

Kaytoo feels simultaneous tenderness and exasperation, an emotion he’s become very familiar with thanks to years working with Cassian. It’s still just as maddening as the first time, though.

“I have met you, you know,” Kaytoo says dryly. “I know the Rebellion comes first. I know you'd die for it. I know there are circumstances under which you'd let me die for it.”

Cassian flinches. He’s taken blows with more composure.

Kaytoo hadn’t intended that, but he can’t really say he’s sorry, either. He isn’t a very nice droid.

“I know you’ll always risk yourself. I know you’ll come back from missions and I won’t be able to reach you, no matter how physically close you are, and I know there will never be a cozy house with stable work hours and guests over for dinner. I’ve known this all along, Cassian, and I’m not asking you for anything you can’t give.” He twines his fingers with Cassian’s and brings his other hand up to the man’s face. “Just give me this.”

Blinking and wiping his eyes, Cassian nods. Covers Kaytoo’s hand with his own.

“Help me forget,” he says, voice thick.

“Forget what?” Kaytoo asks, fingertips brushing tears from his lover’s face.

Cassian’s eyes are pleading, vulnerable. “Everything but you.”

It feels like a jammed component clicking into place. “Yes,” Kaytoo agrees, and traces his fingertips across Cassian’s collarbone. “Yes.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100% grade A fancy smut. Also the comfort to Chapter 15's hurt.  
> Light D/s. Fluids.  
> Presume hygiene happens when it should.  
> Enjoy, my lovelies!

“Yes.” Kaytoo’s voice softens. It slows the anguish welling up through the fractures in Cassian’s self-control. “Yes.”

The warmth of Gatalenta makes Kaytoo’s fingers just a little cooler than Cassian's skin. They drag across his clavicle and dip under his collar, then back across to repeat on the other side. It's tender and lovely and Cassian thinks the softness might break him.

“Kay,” he pleads, unsure exactly what he's asking for.

The droid seems to understand what Cassian doesn’t, because Kaytoo’s fingers move up the lines of his pulse until his hand is wrapped lightly around Cassian’s throat, exerting barely any pressure at all. It’s an echo of the supply closet on Yavin, but unlike before, he doesn't immediately let go.

Cassian sucks in a breath as his heartrate skyrockets, a surge of pliant want inundating his system.

“Tighter,” he whispers.

Kay’s eyes readjust - Cassian isn’t sure how or why, maybe Kaytoo is magnifying or using particular spectra to better gauge actions and reactions - and slowly complies, unyielding fingers pressing inward. Cassian's head is already tilted up to look Kaytoo in the eye, but the breadth of the droid’s hand now makes it impossible for him to do anything else. Kay stops before cutting off his airway, grip just tight enough for Cassian to feel his own heartbeat against metal.

Tight enough to know he can’t move.

Somehow the physical pressure equalizes the flood in Cassian; it feels like as long as Kaytoo is holding him, he won’t overflow. He can breathe again.

“Kay,” he says again, and this time it’s praise. He squeezes the hand twined with his, rests the other on his lover’s pelvic cradle. Kaytoo can’t feel it but he caresses the metal there anyway.

“Cassian,” the droid responds, a note of wonder in his voice. “This is...different. From other kinds of touch. It shouldn’t be, not really. I’m not sure it makes sense.” Without changing his grip by a millimeter, he slowly tugs Cassian forward a step, brings his other hand to the small of the human’s back. “I like it. You feel more...mine.”

Heat flares throughout Cassian’s body. “Yes.”

Kaytoo hums. “Maybe it’s because your most vital processes are passing through my hand,” he muses, eyes once again recalibrating as they bore down into Cassian’s. “I can’t feel your nervous system functioning, of course, but your respiration and heartbeat are easily perceptible. It’s very intimate.” His other hand drags in loops on Cassian’s back, the hard edges of him bumping against Cassian’s spine, then sinking just a little into the muscle on either side, and again. Every pass winds the desire in Cassian’s belly a little tighter, sends a little more blood into his cock. “The power and trust are also important to this feeling, I think. You know my capabilities. That I have to be careful not to harm you.”

Cassian’s voice is no less certain for how ragged it is. “You won’t.”

“Of course not,” he says, more gently than Cassian would have expected. “Is that why you like it? That I am dangerous and choose not to be a danger to you?”

“At least partly,” Cassian admits. Guesses. He doesn’t really understand why he works like this, just knows that he does. Knows that he needs this.

The droid hums again, watching Cassian’s face, and caresses the man’s hip, fingers tracing the ridge of bone. The touch is firm, dragging sparks through his skin, setting him ablaze. He feels almost drugged with it, and a very distant part of him marvels at how far gone he is in so short a time, just with Kay’s hands on his skin. In combination with Kaytoo’s unwavering gaze it’s generating a kind of heat that gives Cassian a floating sensation, like if he really let go he could be swept away on the wave of pleasure and leave everything else behind.

It’s too much, the heat and how achingly hard he is, and at the same time not enough. He takes his hand from where it’s settled on Kaytoo and reaches down.

Before he can stroke himself, Kaytoo’s fingers have closed around Cassian’s wrist. Trying to pull away is like yanking on the galaxy’s most comfortable binders.

“Don’t touch yourself. I have plans,” Kaytoo says, and then catches Cassian’s other wrist in the same hand.

Cassian’s utterly helpless now and he can’t stop the moan that is part frustration, part desire, part pleasure. Before he can react further, Kay turns and starts pushing him slowly backwards. The human has no choice but to comply, and in a few careful steps his shoulderblades connect with the bulkhead.

“I think you like not having decisions,” Kaytoo says thoughtfully, “which doesn’t surprise me at all. Take off your clothes.” He releases Cassian so he can obey, but stands with arms planted on either side of the man, boxing him in, only allowing just enough room to undress.

Once he’s naked, Kay’s hand is back on his throat, and goosebumps tingle all up and down Cassian’s body. Despite being more aroused than he’s ever been in his life, he doesn’t reach for his cock or seek friction with his hips, just lets precome collect under his foreskin and drip onto the floor.

Kaytoo looks him over before his gaze settles back on Cassian’s.

“That’s better,” the droid says affectionately, other hand stroking the man’s cheek.

The simple praise shouldn’t, Cassian is sure, make him feel like he’s just stolen an entire Imperial archive with no losses.

Kaytoo presses his fingers to Cassian’s lips. He kisses back, nibbling the droid’s fingertips, and Kay lets him do that for several moments. Cassian tries to lean forward, wants to lick and suck and pull sexual noises from his lover, but the hand at his throat is immobile and he chokes himself just a little in trying. It’s frustrating and also strangely delicious.

“Don’t do that. I won’t do this again if you hurt yourself,” Kay threatens.

“Sorry,” Cassian says, and his own contriteness is a surprise.

“Hm,” Kay says, noncommittally, and drags all of Cassian’s bedding to the deck one-handed. He pulls away from the wall, taking Cassian with him.

“Down.” Kaytoo pushes inexorably towards the floor. Cassian grabs Kay’s arm to steady himself as he kneels, then sits, and finally lies back on the blankets, his lover’s metal hand never wavering as Kay follows him down. He looms over Cassian, one knee between the human’s, the elbow of his free hand splayed out to the side for better balance. His sternum ridge presses down on one side of the human’s chest, again not enough to make breathing difficult, just enough to make Cassian feel utterly pinned. The small amount of hardness he lost getting down comes raging back.

“I’m locking my legs, shoulder and elbow,” the droid says, releasing the human’s throat, and Cassian hears hydraulics adjusting. “Try to unbalance me. I want to be sure you’re safe if I freeze.”

“Uh, okay,” Cassian says, and with palms on Kaytoo’s chest heaves upwards.

Nothing happens.

He tries twisting, pulling, kicking at Kaytoo’s legs, shoving at his stabilizing elbow, and the only thing he accomplishes is nudging both of their bodies a few inches to one side. He’s sure that if they weren’t on blankets, he wouldn’t have even gotten that much.

Kaytoo chuckles darkly. The sound is electricity down Cassian’s spine.

“Good. I like you not going anywhere.”

Cassian smiles up into the lights of Kay’s eyes. He feels wicked. “What are you going to do with me now that you’ve got me?”

“Mm, first I’m going to fuck your mouth,” Kaytoo says, and Cassian’s eyes go wide as the droid pushes two fingers past his lips. Kay’s vocabulator makes a breathy noise, and Cassian shakes off his surprise enough to swallow.

“Oh, Cassian, yes,” Kay whispers. “You feel so good.” He pulls his fingers back, not all the way out, and then slides them again into Cassian’s mouth, fingertips pressing firmly against the man’s tongue. The digits go halfway down Cassian’s throat, filling him, and then retreat to do it all again. And again. And again. It’s an effort for Cassian to keep up with his lover’s pace but he does, tongue and lips and throat all working Kaytoo’s fingers, desperate little grunts and keens escaping him.

Now his hips are rocking of their own accord, even when he tries to stop, hitting only air until he braces his free leg against the floor and pushes up, moaning in pleasurable relief when his cock finally, finally rubs against Kay’s upper thigh.

“Oh, maker, you generate such amazing input,” Kaytoo whispers. A metal hand pushes Cassian’s hip down to the floor and the fingers in his mouth go still. “And I’m not done yet. Ugh, I thought twenty percent intensity was enough to not get overwhelmed, but you’re so...you.” He pulls his hand from Cassian’s mouth, and the human whines.

Kaytoo’s eyes flicker. “I’ll try ten percent. Stay down,” he says, sounding a little choked, and reaches for the wall beside them, too far behind Cassian for him to see. He hears a compartment opening and closing, and then Kaytoo is doing something above the human’s head. It’s almost torturous for Cassian not to push back up again, not to try to find release.

“Kay,” Cassian says, low, rough. “Kay, please, I need you.”

Kaytoo’s eyes flicker down to Cassian’s face. The droid swears.

“Hold on, Cassian, I’ve almost...there.” One arm pulls back, the free one, and the other hand caresses Cassian’s face, pushing sweaty hair out of his eyes, tracing his cheekbones and lips. Their eyes are still locked when Kaytoo’s free arm slips under Cassian’s leg, nudges it up, and presses a finger to the ring of muscle at his core.

Cassian gasps and grabs at Kay’s sides.

“I have collected more data,” Kaytoo tells him, optics flicking all over Cassian’s face. His lubricant-coated finger starts massaging circles against the bundle of nerves. Cassian whimpers. “I understand now why you laughed about that. Even the most helpful pornography was ridiculous.”

Cassian huffs a laugh, then swears as Kaytoo presses the first segment of his finger into him. “Kay,” he whispers. Then louder. “Kay, Kay, yes.”

He takes it maddenly slowly, working his finger in tiny circles, loosening Cassian's body a millimeter at a time. When Kay pushes in again, Cassian can feel every edge and curve of the droid's silver knuckle. His hips start moving.

“No,” Kaytoo admonishes, and his other hand closes around Cassian’s throat. “You need to be still, at least until your muscles relax sufficiently.”

Cassian can’t help the half-moan, half-whine that escapes him, but somehow he manages to still his rut, wills himself to relax. He doesn’t know if he could have done it without the grounding pressure of his lover’s hand.

“There,” Kay says after a while, and pushes his finger in until his hand is flush against Cassian’s skin. The durasteel digit is the longest, hardest thing Cassian’s ever taken, and it’s so good he doesn’t know how much longer he can keep himself from moving.

“Kay, please,” he breathes. Begs. “More. Want more of you. Please.”

Kaytoo’s eyes flare. “In a moment,” he says, and then starts curling his finger, working it around, pushing his hand up and down in an effort to open Cassian further. He presses briefly on the spot inside that erases everything except pleasure, and Cassian’s back arches up off the blankets. “Kay!”

Somehow, he still manages not to jam his hips downwards.

The finger slides out, and Cassian makes a disappointed sound before it’s back, now with another, and he throws his head back at the stretch. Every bit of conscious control he has left is devoted to not grinding down, not fucking himself on Kaytoo’s fingers. He’s lost the fact that it’s to keep him from harm, only retains the knowledge that it’s what Kay has asked of him.

“You’re soft and tight at the same time, and slick, and so warm,” Kaytoo is murmuring, and his fingers slide deeper, stretch Cassian wider, and it’s so good and not fast enough and Cassian is stupid with pure animal want. “It’s only two fingers but I know I could achieve orgasm like this with the processor at anything over fifteen percent. Not now, though. I don’t want to miss anything. I think I like you being out of your mind for me even more than I like orgasms.”

“Kay,” Cassian breathes. Pleads. Praises. “Kay, I don’t have much control left.”

“I know,” Kaytoo says, half smug and half soothing. His fingers slide the rest of the way home, filling Cassian. He can feel every joint, every segment, every vibration of Kaytoo’s servos. Both lovers are utterly still for a long moment, and then Kay slowly twists his wrist, curls his fingers.

“You can move now,” he says, and Cassian does. He could sob with relief if he wasn’t too busy moaning.

Kaytoo, for his part, takes his fingers from Cassian’s throat and slides back into his mouth, other hand pumping in and out of his body, fingers curling to various degrees until they land on Cassian’s prostate and the human cries out. Then Kay does it again, and again, refrains from it for a few thrusts, then again. If there’s a pattern to it, Cassian is too far gone to recognize it, can only rock up and down to meet Kaytoo’s fingers, only swirl his tongue around the ones in his mouth, only let Kay’s optics burn into his lust-blown eyes.

Cassian’s been so aroused for so long that he doesn’t feel his orgasm coming until he’s shouting, writhing on Kaytoo’s hands, his release a surge of electricity between those two points. From a great distance he feels himself spurting all over Kay’s abdomen, his fluids dripping down onto his own stomach, and he has just enough brainpower to think that he should do something about that.

He floats in pleasure for he doesn’t know how long. Awareness returns slowly through the fog of it, but when it does he registers a metal hand carding through his hair. The other traces slow curves on his hip. Glowing photoreceptors stare down at him.

“Hi,” he says, what feels like a goofy grin on his face.

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” Kaytoo points out, but softly. “I suppose you did, though.”

Cassian wraps his arms around his lover. “That was amazing.”

“I’m going to remind you you said that,” Kay promises, self-satisfied. A long arm reaches out to grab Cassian’s discarded underwear. “If you don’t mind?”

Cassian takes the cloth, wipes the mess off Kay, then himself. “We should have used a condom,” he sighs. “You need another oil bath.”

“I’ll use the Oldins’ tomorrow,” Kay says, unconcerned. “Besides, I wanted all of you.”

A new warmth, unrelated to sex, blooms in Cassian’s chest. He leans up to kiss Kaytoo’s face.

The droid hums, rests his forehead against Cassian’s for a moment, and then pushes himself up. He wraps the blankets around Cassian and returns to curl over him.

“You should sleep now.”

Cassian settles deeper into Kay’s embrace. The droid lowers the lights of both the ship and his eyes, and Cassian closes his own.

“Goodnight, Kay,” he murmurs. He’s close enough to hear the small sounds of cooling fans and motors and various other processes happening inside the droid’s plating, and they mingle with his own breathing as he drifts to sleep.


	17. Chapter 17

“In positive news,” K-2SO announces to the group wedged into a side alley on Rishi, “The prison’s control center is still on fire.”

Cassian gives Kaytoo one of his flat, waiting-for-the-other-shoe looks. The expression on Commander Relina Kurant’s face is vaguely similar, though since this is her first mission with Kaytoo, it lacks the depth of experience that Cassian’s conveys.

“Of course,” the droid continues, “that means all Imperial facilities and the spaceport are on lockdown until further notice.”

Kurant swears. Cassian nods grimly.

“However, I calculate that in approximately ten hours, political pressure will require the planetary governor to begin allowing luxury liners and private yachts of values in excess of a quarter million credits to depart the spaceport.”

Cassian is too busy checking his gear to bother reacting, but Kurant frowns. “You want us to sneak onto a luxury ship?”

“No,” K-2SO says, “I want you to incapacitate and impersonate one of the owners and _steal_ a luxury ship.”

Kurant’s eyebrows are both hidden in her messy hair, and Kaytoo lets himself enjoy the obviousness of her reaction before continuing. “To be more convincing you should dress the part. Expensive clothing. Elaborate hairstyles. Perhaps jewelry.” The Commander’s face is increasingly more incredulous. “Fortunately, the drafting of planetary security has created vulnerabilities in the high-value retail district.”

Cassian finally looks up at this. He has ashes in his hair, no jacket, boots scuffed and stained with engine grease, pants and shirt torn and covered in blood (none of it his, Kaytoo is happy to know). The Spec Ops people look even worse. “We won’t even get close in our state.”

“Yes. It requires intermediate stages of theft, but I’ve calculated that.”

“Of course you have,” Cassian mutters, but his eyes are crinkling in amusement.

* * *

Secretary Augree Gidman, Imperial bureaucrat, had been the proud owner of a high-rent apartment in the city center. Fortunately for the rebels, he’d also been arrogant enough to be carrying his home address and identification chit on him at the same time, and now he’s the proud owner of a broken neck and the inside of a trash compactor.

Never let it be said that Intelligence or Spec Ops are inefficient.

Cassian sneaks them all into the luxury penthouse after Kaytoo sweeps the place for bugs and sets them up on a false repeating loop.

“You clean up first, Captain,” Kurant says. “We’ll get some food going and see if there’s anything we can use in his personal data.”

Cassian doesn’t argue.

Soon, the organics are clean and fed. They dress Cassian and Kurant in the least ostentatious clothing they find in Gidman’s closet while the others use the apartment’s sanitizer to clean their own gear. The whole operation takes less than two hours.

“Are you sure we still need to get more clothes?” Kurant asks, adjusting her stolen jacket.

“These don’t fit us well,” Cassian answers before Kaytoo can. “They’re fine for the street, but we’ll be under scrutiny at the spaceport.”

The Spec Ops commander sighs.

* * *

“This would have been easier if you hadn’t knocked out the attendant,” K-2SO points out, gesturing to the unconscious twi’lek while leaning down to peer more closely at the clothes on a rack. “The tailoring droid can’t help us with stylistics.”

“He was going to hit the silent alarm,” Cassian counters, thumbing through a row of shirts. “Getting arrested would make shopping a little harder.”

“A broken arm would not have impaired his ability to assist us.” Kaytoo pulls out a deep blue tunic and matching trousers, holding them up in front of Cassian.

Kurant glances over from the gown section. “That’s a good color for you, Andor,” she says.

Cassian blinks, shrugs, and hands the suit to the tailoring droid. It takes his measurements with an holo scan and begins the alterations.

Kurant, for her part, chooses a striking floor-length piece in an emerald green and starts perusing the jewelry.

The tailoring droid finishes its work and hands the suit back to Cassian, who’s put on a silken ivory shirt as-is. He’s adjusting the tunic in a mirror when Kurant comes up beside him.

“Damn, Captain, I didn’t know you cleaned up so nice,” she says appreciatively. “You could be a holovid star. I bet you have people throwing themselves at you all the time.”

Cassian snorts. “Sometimes.” His eyes find Kaytoo’s in the mirror, and Kay really hopes he doesn’t mean that, because he hardly _threw himself_ at Cassian.

Well. Maybe a little. But given how much and for how long he’d wanted more than friendship, he felt his restraint was admirable. Not to mention that Cassian would never have made the first move. If it hadn’t been for the silk bats, they might still be secretly longing for each other.

And why did he say ‘sometimes,' anyway? Kaytoo is ninety-two percent certain that he would have noticed other rebels making sexual or romantic overtures. However, there are days and sometimes entire weeks of missions when Kaytoo doesn’t see Cassian. It’s impossible to calculate the number of such offers he would get on duty, but it could be high. It could be very high.

And that would be in addition to the honey trap missions Cassian occasionally takes. Now that Kaytoo is thinking about it, he realizes that only some Intelligence operatives take those sorts of missions. Originally he chalked that up to the fact that not everyone is willing to go to the same alarming lengths as Cassian, but now he wonders. Is it also because not everyone is as attractive as Cassian?

Kaytoo has always been aware that there are different kinds of attraction between organics, that some of them are purely physical desires and responses. Even so, it’s jarring to suddenly be made aware that someone would want Cassian just for how he looks.

K-2SO turns slightly towards Kurant. “Usually his insensitivity puts them off,” he says dryly, and throws a charcoal-grey cloak at Cassian.

Kurant laughs. Cassian, at least, has the grace to look a little guilty.

* * *

K-2SO’s prediction of the loosening port restrictions comes true, and the rebels slice the documentation for Gidman’s personal transport, adding their images and aliases. Cassian and Kurant’s new clothes help fool the harried port officials, and then the whole team is on their way. A couple of hyperjumps and they get to a rebel outpost, ditch the yacht, and go their separate ways. Kurant gives both Intelligence operatives a friendly thump.

In a show of generosity, Kaytoo doesn’t thump back.

Once he and Cassian have an Alliance ship to themselves, the spy transmits a report and then disappears into the refresher.

He’s been awake for twenty hours and eleven minutes, not even close to one of his records, but still long enough to be ready for sleep. Kaytoo sits on the berth and waits with a bottle of water and five argumentative strategies.

Cassian emerges in under twenty minutes, naked and slightly damp, and Kaytoo takes inventory: the shadows of bruises from two missions ago are still yellowing his left side and shoulder; the scar from the blaster graze on his right arm has begun to fade to match his skin tone; the rest of his assorted scars are the same as ever. There are no new wounds on his body, and he hasn't lost any visible weight in a few months. Overall, he is in good condition. It makes Kaytoo glad.

He doesn’t let himself wish that the spy didn’t routinely sustain damage.

“Hello, Cassian.”

Cassian’s mouth tugs upwards. “Hello, Kay. Waiting to bundle me into bed?”

Kaytoo nods, holding out the bottle. “And ensure good hydration.”

Cassian takes it, drinks. Considers Kaytoo. “Do you--” He stops. Takes another drink followed by a deep breath.

Kaytoo waits.

“Does how I look affect you?” His expression is a controlled neutral.

K-2SO isn’t surprised. He would have been thinking about it himself if he hadn’t been too busy with the mission and trying not to wonder just how many organics want to touch Cassian.

“Yes,” he answers, because that much is easy. “I like seeing physical signs of health and happiness.” He reaches forward to gently push the human’s damp hair away from his eyes.

Cassian leans into the touch and gives half a smile. “I knew that. But, my being naked right now, does that do anything for you?”

Kaytoo strokes Cassian’s face some more, lets the hedonic data soothe him as he finds words.

“I don’t have an endocrine system, so I do not experience a hormonal reaction,” he begins. Cassian remains still and generously doesn’t roll his eyes at the obviousness of the statement. “Additionally, I have seen you naked while injured, ill, or during simple clothing changes many more times than during intimacy, so I also do not yet have a strong positive association. This history also prevents me from developing the false idea that nudity necessarily indicates sexual interest or availability.”

Cassian is nodding, maybe to indicate understanding, maybe to cover some reaction he doesn’t want his partner to see. Kaytoo isn’t sure. He takes Cassian’s hand and pulls him closer until he's standing between metal knees.

“However,” the droid continues, “Clothing hides most of your infrared radiation. Being able to see all of it is...compelling.”

Cassian blinks and laughs. “My body heat looks good?”

“Yes.” Kaytoo answers, and lets his optical sensors slide up and down his lover. “It’s hard to describe to someone who can’t see it, but it’s a bit like glowing and a bit like an image more sharply rendered than its surroundings.”

Cassian’s smile softens and he kisses Kaytoo’s forehead. Then he sets the water aside and puts both hands on Kaytoo’s shoulders. “Is that the case with all organics?”

“You’re the only organic I’ve seen naked since the reprogramming,” Kaytoo says, because the Spec Ops team had changed in private. And while dealing with nude Imperial prisoners - some of whom he’d stripped himself - is something he remembers, it isn’t something he at all wants to associate with Cassian.

The spy, for his part, doesn’t ask.

“But I don’t expect it would be the same. I much prefer looking at you regardless of what you’re wearing.” He pauses to embrace his lover and lean his head against the man’s chest. The sound of Cassian’s heartbeat conducting through Kaytoo’s plating gives him a very strong sense of well-being. “I admit I’m not sure how much of that is positive association and how much is aesthetic appreciation. I would have to pay more attention to other organics to really be sure, and that’s boring.” He leans back again so he can see Cassian’s face. “I know the beauty standards Kurant was referring to. I agree about your skeletal proportions and your smile, at least.”

Cassian laughs again. “You like my skeleton.”

“Skeletal proportions,” Kaytoo corrects, just to keep Cassian laughing. His smile really does do all sorts of things to Kaytoo’s processes, most of which he can’t quantify but definitely enjoys.

When Cassian goes quiet, Kaytoo notices that his surface temperature is dropping. “You’re getting cold,” he states, and nudges him towards his locker. “Put clothes on.”

Fondly rolling his eyes, Cassian complies. He takes up the silk shirt again and it hangs soft and loose on his shoulders. Kaytoo wants to touch him, and thinks about holovids, and wonders if what he feels is anything like what an organic would feel in his place.

“I didn't realize how objectively attractive you are until someone else pointed it out,” he blurts. “That doesn’t bother you?”

Cassian looks up at Kaytoo, surprise mingling with tenderness on his face. “No,” he says, and pauses to lean over and cup Kaytoo’s face. “My looks, they’re just another tool. Like a blaster or a data spike. I’m glad you don’t think they mean something they don’t.”

The response quiets the static buzz of doubt in Kaytoo’s circuits; however, it causes another kind of interference. He wants Cassian to like his looks. He wants Cassian not to be put off by that desire. It’s very strange.

“Do you find me visually appealing?” Kaytoo asks, because he can’t not. His optics are fixed on his own hands.

“Yes,” Cassian answers immediately, which Kaytoo hadn’t been expecting. He looks up, watches him pull on soft, loose pants. When Cassian's dressed, he sits next to Kaytoo and leans against him.

After a few moments of silence, Kaytoo rolls his eyes. “That was certainly informative.”

Cassian huffs. “You know I’m not good at this.”

“No, really?”

“And _I_ ' _m_ the insensitive one,” the human mutters. Then sighs. Closes his eyes before taking a slow breath.

“Ok. I like how you move, especially when you’re fighting but generally all the time,” he says, frowning in discomfort, eyes still shut. “I like that you’re so tall. I like that you're made of metal, even if it makes some things more difficult. I like your optics.” He opens his eyes to look as he laces their fingers together, still avoiding Kaytoo’s gaze. “And I like your hands.”

Happiness hums in K-2SO’s circuits, and he can’t bring himself to feel silly about wanting the reassurance. “See? That wasn’t so bad.”

Cassian snorts again but also squeezes Kaytoo’s hand. “Go charge. I’ll try to sleep.”

The droid stands. “You first.” He gently pushes on Cassian’s shoulder to tip him over.

Cassian chuckles. “One day I’ll put myself to bed and you won’t know what to do with yourself.”

“Have some peace and quiet for once,” Kaytoo deadpans. He darkens the cabin and watches as Cassian’s body heat starts to light up the bedding.

“You’re still here,” the spy says.

“Observant as always.”

“You may not know this, but it’s hard to sleep when someone’s sassing you.”

“Maybe that wouldn’t happen if you weren’t so insufferable.”

“Fine, you win, I’m terrible. Go charge.”

Kaytoo turns to go. Pauses.

“Goodnight, Cassian.”

There's a shifting of bedding, and the human's voice softens. “G’night, Kay.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up for some feels.

Cassian is just pulling several data disks out of the AT-AT factory’s main computer when the building shudders with an explosion. It’s intended to pull troopers away from Cassian and let the strike team damage as many walkers as possible in the process.

He steps over an officer’s body and nods to Kaytoo.

“Anyone in the hallway?”

Kaytoo looks through the wall. “Yes. Wait twelve seconds.”

He does, and then they’re on their way out, Cassian’s shoulders square under the Imperial jacket.

They’ve been walking for barely a minute when Cassian smells smoke. There are wisps of it crawling in near the ceiling from a side corridor.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he muses.

Kaytoo cocks his head, listening to Stormtrooper radio signals.

“It appears that the fire suppression system isn’t working,” he says. “Chance of success lowered to sixty percent.”

Cassian swears. The whole factory has looked remarkably shabby for an Imperial facility, he thinks, and now it’s clear that the lack of upkeep is probably related to the local governor’s notoriously lavish parties.

As they make for the exit the smoke gets thicker, starting to pour in from several places at once, and Cassian covers his mouth with his sleeve. He looks up at Kaytoo.

“Running will increase the chance of success to seventy-one percent,” Kaytoo says.

They run. The smoke thickens, and soon the ceiling is roiling with flames. They’re almost there when burning pieces of the building start to fall around them.

The mission, Cassian thinks as he dodges flaming debris, could be going better.

The exit appears ahead, and he holds his breath and runs flat out, clearing the door as the roar of flames intensifies. He jogs fifty meters to a corner, takes cover, and looks back.

His chest seizes when he doesn’t see Kaytoo.

The comm is in Cassian’s hand without his deciding to get it. “Come in, Kaytoo.”

Nothing but static buzz. It could be that Kaytoo isn’t responding, or it could be that his comm was damaged or that the signal was blocked for some reason.

Heart beating just as fast as it had been during his sprint, Cassian checks his chrono. There are three minutes before the strike team leaves without him. It’s time to detach himself from his emotions and run for the extraction point, but he doesn’t move. “Kaytoo, do you read?”

Silence. It leaves room for Cassian’s mind to fill with images of Kaytoo pinned under burning rubble, Kaytoo trapped behind blast doors, Kaytoo stuttering to a halt when his interior components heat past their melting points, Kaytoo falling as he loses first motion, then sensory data, and finally all processes, leaving him nothing but a vaguely humanoid piece of slag.

Part of Cassian is screaming that the mission comes first, the mission is why they’re there at all, that Kaytoo knew the risks when he signed on and the spy needs to follow protocol. To shut it up he looks around, finds a noncompacting trash bin, brings the comm up to tell Dameron where he’s going to stash the tapes. Then he’s going to rush back into the factory to find Kay.

Before he can even pull the first tape from his jacket, he sees a tall shadow in the blazing doorway. His heart leaps, and then stops when a metal beam detaches from the building and falls towards Kaytoo.

“Kay!” someone screams. There’s no air in Cassian’s lungs.

The droid senses the danger and reacts swiftly, catching the red-hot beam above his head and throwing it behind him as he leaves the building. Cassian’s breath comes rushing back into his body, and he stops running ten meters from the factory entrance without remembering the intervening distance.

Kaytoo’s running towards him.

“Wrong way, idiot! Go!” he yells, waving an arm. Are his hands red?

Cassian sprints for the transport, darting glances back at Kay. They’re both going too fast for him to get a good look at the droid’s hands.

They board the drop ship, and Kaytoo immediately sits on the decking with his back to the other rebels. His hands hover over his lap, fingers spread.

“Kay?” Cassian asks. He crouches next to Kaytoo, trying to get a good look. “Are you-- oh.” His stomach drops.

His hands _has_ been red - Cassian can feel the heat radiating from them.

“This is...suboptimal,” K-2SO says. “My plating and frame are intact, but I am unsure about the rest of my components. I will not know until my hands reach ambient temperature.”

Cassian’s never been so glad that the droid doesn’t have pain sensors, but it still twists his insides to see his lover in distress.

“When will that be?” The spy keeps his voice low.

“I estimate another nine minutes.” He looks at Cassian. “Are the tapes safe?”

The spy nods, glad that he hadn’t had time to abandon them. He checks on the strike team - down two operatives and their morale - and uses the hypercomm to report back to base. They he takes the jump seat next to Kay, crosses his arms, and waits out the last two minutes. To keep himself from throwing his arms around Kay in front of the Pathfinders, he closes his eyes and mentally recites the details of his least frequently used covers.

It’s not very long before the quiet sound of machine parts seizing on each other hits Cassian in the teeth and gut. Kaytoo is watching his own fingers twitch in tiny ranges of movement. The droid’s arms begin to shake, and then he abruptly lets his hands fall to the deck.

He stares straight ahead. “I require repairs.”

“You’ll get them,” Cassian promises.

* * *

The Alliance only makes him halfway a liar. Servos and wiring of every kind are in abundance, and it's easy to requisition what Kaytoo needs in this department. Synthetic muscle is more scarce, but Cassian makes a good (even true) argument about the importance of K-2SO's Intelligence role, and they allocate him a fifth of the Alliance’s remaining stock. In less than two days, the droid’s hands have their old strength and range of motion.

What aren’t available are the dozens of pressure and temperature sensors needed to replace the melted lumps Cassian pries out of Kaytoo’s hands. They’re given a few, less finely calibrated pressure sensors, so with a lot of frustrating practice Kaytoo can still grasp things without crushing or dropping them. He can still pilot the U-wing, still assist organic rebels, and still pass for an Imperial droid. The sensors aren’t fine enough for delicate work, but the droid techs don’t see that as one of K-2SO’s essential functions, and there aren’t any temperature sensors at all.

“He’s fit for duty, and there simply aren’t any other compatible sensors,” the Quartermaster tells Cassian. There’s the barest hint of sympathy in her voice. “Requisition closed.”

The spy has to take several breaths.

“Understood.” The weight in his stomach compresses even more.

He puts off telling Kay for a couple of hours, taking care of small tasks he hardly ever bothers  with. The wookiee running the laundry doesn’t even know who he is.

He returns to the ship straight-backed and blank-faced.

“No replacements, are there,” Kaytoo says, voice flat.

Cassian shakes his head once, sharply. “We’ll just have to find some ourselves.”

Kaytoo flexes his hands, looks from them to Cassian. “The odds are--”  

“We’ll find some,” Cassian says, and Kaytoo doesn’t bring it up again.

* * *

“...complete losses, and we haven’t been able to find replacements,” Cassian finishes.

Jastha’s holoimage purses its lips.

“So there are three basic categories of pressure sensors,” the tech starts. “One are the kind installed in protocol droids, not very sensitive. He’s using some of those now, right?”

Cassian nods.

“The other big group are the very finely-tuned sensors you see in series with flexible synthskin. It isn’t compatible with plating.” She shakes her head sadly. “The sensor Kx’s are made with is unique to that series. No other plated droid has that kind of sensitivity. Even if the Empire changed its mind about surplussing parts, unless other droids start using it you’re not going to find anything like it on the market. I’m so sorry, Cassian.”

It feels like half his internal organs sink to the floor.

Jaw tight, the spy nods.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, and cuts the connection before Jastha can reply.

He stays on the roof. Kay’s probably extrapolated that Cassian was going to call Jastha sooner or later, and will know the outcome when the spy doesn’t mention it. And that’s if Kaytoo doesn’t call the Oldins himself. Maybe Cassian should say something, if only to save Kay the same hope and disappointment.

Still, it was good to have talked to her. At least one other person knew what they were going through. And it saved a lot of time Cassian would have wasted combing through junk dealers and the black market.

There’s one other way. He starts planning.

* * *

They’re given another mission. The ship leaves Yavin IV and jumps out of realspace.

Cassian turns towards Kaytoo and lays a hand on his lover’s arm.

The droid doesn’t move.

“Hey.”

Kaytoo stares at Cassian’s hand. “You desire physical closeness.”

Cassian nods.

“I--” Kaytoo says. Looks out at the blue of hyperspace. “I no longer have the control necessary for intimate contact.”

The words land in Cassian’s stomach like the sudden fall of a ship in turbulent atmo.

“You’ve done fine with the controls--” he starts, gesturing to the console, but he doesn’t get to finish.

“The controls don’t bruise, or have sensitive nerve tissue, and can withstand five times as many Pascals before fracture,” Kaytoo says, tightly-controlled fury in his voice. “The controls don’t feel pain, and can be replaced when broken.”

“Kay--”

“And I know you don’t really care about your own safety but sometimes you humor me, and you should also think about the fact I’ll be deactivated and scrapped if I’m deemed a danger to you,” he continues, and it shuts the spy’s mouth with a snap. “So no, Cassian, my proficiency with the U-wing is not at all indicative of any other capabilities and I would thank you to kindly shut up.”

Now Cassian’s chest and throat are tight, strangling his breaths as they rip through him in time with the _no no no_ of his racing pulse. He staggers to his feet, somehow managing not to brush against Kaytoo, and flees to the refresher.

It’s the first time he’s ever needed a shower before a mission.

* * *

Mostly it's prisons that have what Cassian needs, but the security on those is far too tight for a one-man mission. He runs through contact after contact, cashing in favors, burning social capital, raising eyebrows and not caring.

There are four Imperial outposts that are soft enough and have the right resources. He studies them extensively in secret.

It’s not as hard as it would have been before. Kaytoo leaves him to himself more than he ever has. Cassian takes the pain of that and folds it tight, puts it away like all the other hurt that can’t be faced, lets the pressure drive him.

* * *

“What if you don’t close your hands?” he asks one day as they observe a target from a rooftop. He feels Kaytoo turn to look at him but continues his scan with the quadnocs.

“That...would be safe, at least,” Kay replies, dubiously. He doesn’t have to say that he doubts it would be anything else.

That’s all right for now. K-2SO often becomes more receptive to new ideas the longer he has to think about them.

He doesn’t need very long at all, it turns out. As soon as they’re back on the U-wing, kill confirmed to base, Cassian showered, Kaytoo turns and reaches out a hand, open.

Slowly, Cassian lays his palm over Kay’s, the droid’s fingers twitching just slightly. Cassian grips firmly, and after two weeks of not touching it brings up a surge of emotion that he wrestles back down.

He steps closer, finds Kaytoo’s other hand, and pulls the droid’s arms around himself. The embrace is stiff at first, as Kay settles into the idea, and then Cassian feels open palms against his shoulder blades. He wants more, more, more, wants Kay to touch him like he did before, so careful and so firm, but it’s still better than he had feared, better than never touching again. He throws his own arms around Kaytoo, mashes his face against his chest plating, and takes a shuddering breath. “Missed you.”

The metal arms tighten by a few millimeters. “I still can’t feel like I used to.”

Warmth spills down Cassian’s cheeks. “I know.”

“I thought it would hurt less,” Kaytoo tells him. “Not touching at all.”

Cassian is silent for a long moment. “Did it?”

“The longing was worse, but my grief was...less immediate.”

“I’m,” Cassian chokes out, “I’m sorry, we don’t have to--”

“Shush,” Kaytoo says. Before, he would have stroked Cassian’s hair or cheek or simply rubbed his back in a moment like this. Now they only have the static embrace. “This is just how things are now. It’s not nearly enough, but it’s better than nothing.”

Cassian thinks about the risks he’s planning to take precisely to make sure this isn’t how things are going to be, and says nothing, only clings tighter to Kay. The droid will be furious with him, probably, but even so Cassian thinks it will be worth it. Even if--

Even if things still don’t go back to the way they were before, at least Kaytoo will have a choice.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut in the 6th part of this chapter. Feels in all of them.

Since his initialization, Kaytoo has had a priority hierarchy of his components. The most vital is his core, so he runs in a crouch to keep his head farther from the heat. This helps the second priority as well, the power and support systems in his torso, which are also protected by his plating. Third are the legs he needs to escape, and lastly his arms. These he uses to swat aside flaming debris to keep it from the rest of him. These he uses to pull open a scalding door. By the time he catches the beam at the exit, the data stream from his sensors is already failing.

The shape of the beam as his fingers close around it is the last thing he feels before his hands are a terrifying null. It’s the strongest fear he's ever felt on his own behalf, to the point that his anger at Cassian for running back _towards_ the flaming building is actually soothing.

He loses that fury by the time they board the dropship, though, and the dread fouling his circuits resurges. When he tells Cassian that he doesn’t know the extent of the damage, it’s effectively a lie. He is ninety-seven point four percent sure that all his wires, servos, artificial muscle fiber, and sensors are completely destroyed.

It’s a lie, but he wants to believe it badly enough that he isn’t painfully obvious about it.

The droid listens to Cassian’s report, the grim voices of the Pathfinders. Tries to extrapolate the exact path the fire had taken through the factory. Catalogues the tiny signs of worry on Cassian's face. Anything to delay the moment when he won’t even have two point six percent uncertainty to shield him from the truth.

Nine minutes have passed. He looks at his hands. Sends the commands for motion.

Some of his motors aren’t completely destroyed, it seems, nor the wiring that connects them. His fingers jerk in tiny, aborted movements. He runs through all the possible motion commands but they all yield the exact same results.

He lets his hands fall to the deck, but all he feels of the impact are the reverberations in his arms.

* * *

When they take him to recalibrate, he turns off his vocabulator. It will protect him from saying anything too risky and he doesn’t want to talk, anyway.

A droid tech watches as Kaytoo wraps his fingers around the empty beverage canister for the fifth time and lifts it. Before he can move it from one tray to the other, it slips from his grasp, clattering to the floor.

The tech picks it up and puts it back on the tray.

Kaytoo tries again, lifts the can, and when he feels it slipping, adds more pressure. It collapses under his fingers with a metallic crunch.

He drops it into a nearby recycler. The technician picks up another container, this one square and transparent. K-2SO repeats the exercise, this time dropping it just once and only bending it a little.

“Good. If you can do that consistently we’ll call you calibrated.”

Kaytoo nods. The tech selects a small cardboard box. The droid’s fingers punch right through the sides the first time, and he has to replay soothing recordings not to throw everything within reach against the wall.

He gets a new box. He tries again.

As he practices he wonders how much more control he can regain, if any. The force necessary to crush a can is also sufficient to break the more delicate human bones.  

And through it all, it felt dull, distant, half numb. And no temperature data.

He avoids Cassian.

* * *

For the first time since installing the hedonic processor, Kaytoo doesn’t seek out time alone. He wanders through the base, lingers in the hangar, allows himself to be assigned tasks by just about anyone. No one but Cassian seems to notice anything different about his behavior, and for that he is grateful.

The fourth day after the repairs and recalibration, he’s ready to find out just how much he’s lost.

He sneaks into Cassian’s quarters again while the organic rebels are all busy, and Kaytoo stands alone in the dusty little room staring at the locker.

After a few moments, he opens the locker, takes out a shirt. He just holds it for a while before he turns on the hedonic.

The processor functions just as it always has, but now the data stream is slower and grainy, resolution lost with the sensitivity. It’s still pleasurable, but in the way that human vision is still electromagnetic perception: narrow, restricted, incomplete. If he didn’t also have visual data he wouldn’t be sure it was the same object he’d held when the hedonic was first installed.

He turns it all the way up, just to be sure, but that’s worse, the granulation more pronounced, the lack of temperature data more obvious.

He throws the shirt from himself and shuts the processor down, stands motionless in the center of the room for long seconds. Puts the garment back where he found it. Leaves.

* * *

Kaytoo helps drag fuel hoses to the liquid-energy ships. The apparatus and craft themselves have a high tolerance for impact and pressure, and he doesn’t worry too much about breaking things. Once that’s done, he hauls solid fuel cells. A few are slated for the U-wing.

When he’s standing in the belly of the ship, he glances over at the cockpit, and stops.

_“You have reset the ship’s climate control,” Kaytoo observes from the pilot’s seat. The air is already several degrees warmer than it had been._

_Cassian’s mouth quirks up at the corner. “I’m aware.”_

_“The temperature I’d originally selected is eighteen percent more energy-efficient.”_

_“We have more than enough fuel,” Cassian answers as they jump to hyperspace._

_Kaytoo rolls his eyes. “It’s sixty-three percent likely that Draven will take the extra out of your pay, at which point I will definitely say I told you so.”_

_“Okay,” Cassian agrees, and then strips his shirt off._

_Kay stares._

_The Rebel continues working the console as if nothing is out of the ordinary, queueing the next four hyper-jumps. Kaytoo watches the sure motions of his lean arms, the way his hair falls just a little over his eyes, the calm of his face as he inputs coordinates. Cassian exudes living heat, shines bright and sharp with it, bleeds it into the beaten-up copilot’s chair. K-2SO records the moment, already looking forward to seeing Cassian’s vitality over and over._

_It’s fairly obvious, given their discussion about aesthetics, that this is intended to affect Kaytoo. There could be a number of desired outcomes, though, and the droid just keeps staring at Cassian while he tries to calculate which is the most likely._

_There are too many variables._

_“What sort of reaction are you hoping to provoke?” Kaytoo finally asks._

_At last Cassian meets his eyes, expression somewhere between smug and tender, and as he shrugs Kaytoo watches his muscles move under his skin. “Nothing specific, really. Just a reaction.”_

_“I find that unlikely.”_

_Cassian laughs. “Okay, I did hope you’d stare at me. But beyond that, I think I’ll like whatever happens next.”_

_“Hm.”_

_Kaytoo stands, moves behind the copilot chair. He leans down until his face is next to Cassian’s, and wraps his long arms around the man’s shoulders, metal hands coming to rest over his collar bones. Cassian smiles, leans back, and lets his fingers skim over Kaytoo’s hands and arms. He tilts his head until his temple is resting on the droid’s, and they linger like that, the hedonic transforming sensory input into a slow steady contentment humming throughout Kaytoo._

K-2SO carefully places the fuel cells in the appropriate storage compartments, deliberately closes the hatch, and walks at a sedate pace to the hangar bay door. He makes it out to the edge of the tarmac, glances around, and sprints into the treeline. He doesn’t stop running once he’s hidden in the foliage.

Kaytoo had known from the beginning that, barring serious alterations to his base code, he would always want to touch Cassian. Now he can’t. If he doesn’t regain his fine control, maybe never again. He judges he’s far enough from the base and lets loose an anguished sound, something like a howl, and doesn’t care when it startles nearby flying animals from their perches.

He keeps running deeper into the forest. Even if he can one day make himself safe for human companionship, Kaytoo isn’t sure he could bear to learn what the touches would feel like now. Isn’t sure he wouldn’t rather go without touch at all than feel the glorious complexity of Cassian’s body reduced to the paltry caricature of input afforded by his replacement sensors.

He is sure that the longing is burdening his system, overwriting nonessential processes, clamoring for satisfaction that might not exist. The desire is worse than it’s ever been, even between fully understanding what he wanted and not knowing Cassian reciprocated. It’s enough to make him think, fleetingly, of a localized memory wipe, because maybe cutting out this part of himself could help him function. It’s very tempting.

But the spy can’t erase the things that drag him down, and so Kaytoo won’t, either.

He doesn’t know how to tell Cassian any of this.

* * *

When Cassian pushes, K-2SO finds himself lashing out. Cassian’s choked breathing and scramble for the refresher produce reactions in Kaytoo’s processes that can only be described as pain, but he can’t apologize or reassure because it’s not his words or tone that are so terrible but the prospect of never touching again. The idea would strangle him, too, if he had breath.

It’s the thirteenth day since they last touched when Cassian brings up a possible solution. It’s obvious and had occurred to Kaytoo eight days prior, but if Cassian can give voice to his own longing then maybe Kaytoo can face his.

The embrace is awkward, and too still, and Kaytoo wants more than anything to curl his fingers around Cassian’s shoulders. To stroke his hair. The hedonic gives him the kind of data he would expect if he’d been holding the man through his big parka, or maybe a thick blanket. He’d rip the offending barrier away but he can’t, he can’t, he’ll never be able to.

And still. Even then. Cassian crying on his plating while Kaytoo works not to harm him is still better than the cold static field that had been smothering them. Better than the tangible nothing they’d both been drowning in.

They’ll have to find a way to live with it.

* * *

The next time Cassian takes his post-mission shower, Kaytoo turns up the ship’s heat. The twenty-four days since their last sexual activity are starting to show in his stress levels.

Kaytoo waits on the berth.

The shower stops, and a moment later, Cassian pads across the deck, stopping just outside of Kaytoo’s reach.

“Kay?” His face is guarded.

“I thought...if you wanted...” Kaytoo starts. Studies Cassian’s face, trying to catch microexpressions. Sometimes he lets them show. “Perhaps I could...assist you. With self-stimulation.”

Cassian’s hands curl briefly into fists, then relax. He gives Kaytoo a wary, sad half-smile. “I’d like that.”

He closes the distance between them, hand landing on Kaytoo’s shoulder and sliding down his arm. He drags Kay’s hand up, presses a kiss against stiff fingers. Kaytoo can just barely feel Cassian’s beard against his palm.

Kaytoo brings his other hand to Cassian’s waist, rests it there, lets his finger joints close by a few degrees. He presses his whole hand inwards by a half centimeter, not closing it, but still applying more pressure than he’s dared since they started touching again. He’s rewarded with Cassian’s whole smile - still a little sad, but happier than he’s been since the fire.

This - this is good. K-2SO tries to focus on what is, not on what was. Tries to ignore hypotheticals. He pulls gently on Cassian’s waist, bringing him closer, and cups his shoulder blade with the other hand. Cassian rests one knee on the mattress next to Kaytoo’s thigh.

Cassian lets himself be moved, rests his forehead against Kay’s. “Talk to me.”

Kaytoo lets his eyes roam all over Cassian’s body. His breathing is still steady and he hasn’t yet started to become aroused, but he’s warm, relaxed.

“I started to compile data about your physical well-being thirteen minutes after you reprogrammed me,” he says, and starts carefully moving his hands up and down Cassian’s back. “I started adding data about your sexual health and behavior three months after that.”

Cassian laughs, once, more in disbelief and surprise than amusement. “What data? I don’t think I ever did anything sexual in front of you until it was with you.”

“Well,” Kaytoo admits, and starts dragging his thumbs in slow arcs across his lover’s skin, “I pay attention to your physiological responses to the people around you. Of organics you find attractive, fifty percent are human, sixty-eight male, sixty-five physically larger than you, though that might just be because you are of roughly average size, and ninety skilled in combat.”

Cassian’s smile is definitely amused now. “That sounds about right.”

“Further, my auditory sensors are strong enough to know when you experience orgasm while sleeping or self-stimulate in the refresher.”

Cassian flushes, brings a hand to his face, laughs in embarrassment. “Oh, stars. I hope I don’t talk in my sleep.”

“No,” Kaytoo says. He keeps caressing Cassian’s back, lets one hand slide down onto his ass. With some smugness he notes that Cassian’s prick is growing. “You sleep very quietly. An organic would not have noticed.”

Darkened eyes bore into Kaytoo’s optics. “One of the dreams was about you,” he says, and even without the hedonic processor Kay feels a surge of excitement.

“Tell me.” Kaytoo cups both hands around Cassian’s ass, pulls them more firmly against him, lessens the pressure again. It’s not quite kneading but his lover seems to like it.

“It, ah,” he says, and twitches his hips, half-hard cock following. “We were in a safe house. I woke up really hard. You told me to touch myself, but I was too embarrassed, so,” and here the man takes a breath, heart rate increasing, “So you offered to touch me instead.”

“And you let me,” Kaytoo extrapolates, the idea a dark pleasure cycling through him. It helps quash the longing to wrap his fingers around Cassian’s erection. “You always like it when I take care of you.”

Cassian’s breath hitches. He’s fully hard now, and Kaytoo guides one of his hands downward. “Let me see you take care of yourself. I’ve heard you do it but I’ve never watched.”

Biting his lip, Cassian nods, leans over to the in-berth compartment, and retrieves a lubricated condom. He glances down occasionally, but mostly holds Kay’s eyes as he puts it on.

“I jerk off like this in bed sometimes,” he says, and Kaytoo files the fact away with similar data. “Before we got together I wouldn’t let myself think of you like that, but after...” He gives his cock a slow up-and-down pull, eyelashes fluttering. “Some nights on base, when we couldn’t see each other, I thought about you then.”

His hand is picking up speed and adding a swirl of his thumb over his cockhead when he reaches the tip. One of Kaytoo’s background processes regrets that he never tried that, but most of him enjoys Cassian’s display, his compelling heat and the beauty of his lowered guard.   

“I like watching you,” he murmurs, and relishes the way the Cassian's teeth dig into his lip again. “I like seeing you give in to pleasure.” Cassian grunts, twists his wrist, breathes faster. “Yes, like that, Cassian. Just let yourself feel good.” Kaytoo pulls his hands up his lover's hips, lets his thumbs drift along the ridges of bone and ghost over taut muscle.

Eyes closed in pleasure, Cassian moans very quietly.

“Would you let me watch you more often?” Kaytoo asks, voice low and steady. “You could use a secure holocomm in your quarters so I could watch you when we’re apart.”

Cassian moans louder. “Yes,” he answers, his jacking gaining yet more speed and losing rhythm. “Yes, fuck, Kay.”

“And in the shower,” Kaytoo continues. Cassian is very, very close, and Kaytoo is having a hard time deciding where to look, so his optics roam all over his lover. “Then I could see you wet and slick and observe the fluid part of your orgasm without risking water damage.”

Cassian cries out and tips forward, mouth open as he shudders apart, hand frantic on his cock until it stills completely. Kaytoo takes him carefully in his arms, guiding him to lie on the bed, ending with the man’s legs draped over his lap. K-2SO leans down over his lover, brushes his damp hair from his eyes, draws fingertips gently over flushed skin.

As Cassian's breath slows, Kaytoo allows himself twenty seconds to feel regret at not experiencing an orgasm of his own. Then he stops that process, and focuses instead on the satisfaction of his partner’s pleasure.

A warm hand finds Kaytoo’s metal one, rests on it where before they would have laced fingers - it hurts, but not as much as it could. Cassian is searching his face, and Kay is eighty-nine percent sure he wants to offer touch in return.

It is both a relief and a disappointment when he only smiles.

* * *

_K-2SO has numerous databases on organic behavior, and has besides observed many of them sleep. None, of course, as regularly and extensively as Cassian, but enough to be able to make comparisons. Eight months into their acquaintance he already knows that the human sleeps unusually quietly: Cassian doesn’t snore except when ill, doesn’t talk, doesn’t even breathe very loudly. Kaytoo finds it pleasing, actually, that the human’s rest state is so similar to his own low-power mode._

_It’s not that he’s always completely silent and still. Sometimes, Cassian’s body can be tense, his expression unhappy or flat, his breathing too fast for rest. Sometimes a strangled whimper or voiceless cry makes it past his lips. Sometimes there are tears. Those aren’t reactions he sees in Cassian while he’s awake, but then organics can’t control themselves while unconscious._

_Kaytoo has seen much more pronounced reactions in other organics, so whatever it is can’t be that bad._

_Or so he thinks until one night after a particularly difficult mission, one where the spy is forced to use advanced interrogation tactics, and he’s restless for a full day afterwards until Kaytoo slips him a sedative. He sleeps soundly for nearly six hours, practically a record for him, and then in the seventh starts exhibiting typical signs of disturbance._

_What isn’t typical, though, is how Cassian starts awake and immediately curls into a ball while his whole body shakes. Kaytoo comes closer._

_“Cassian? Are you ill?”_

_His dark head shakes. “No, I...no. It’s just a nightmare, Kaytoo.” His voice is unsteady._

_The droid waits. Cassian’s shaking diminishes, but his breathing is still irregular and he’s keeping his face hidden. The loudest organics did not always take this long to recover from a bad dream, and Kaytoo starts reevaluating his protocols._

_“Do you have them often?” he asks._

_Cassian shrugs. “Not as bad as this one, but, yeah.”_

_Kaytoo considers. “This one was particularly bad?”_

_The human laughs, bitterly. Wipes at his tear-streaked face. “Worst one in a couple of months.”_

_Kaytoo is taken aback. “Was I present for that one as well?”_

_Cassian frowns, thinking. “I think so? We were on the ship, anyway.”_

_Kaytoo mentally reviews his records of the past four months, just to account for organic imprecision when speaking about time, and finds very little variance in Cassian’s observable sleep disturbances. That is to say, apparently he had been having nightmares - at least one bad enough to make him seem ill - and Kaytoo hadn’t noticed._

_He decides that Cassian, somehow, has learned to control himself even while unconscious, and the more K-2SO learns the more he comes to realize that he must have had very compelling reasons to do so. Probably very painful or dangerous reasons. Probably from an early age._

Asleep on the floor of a safehouse, Cassian’s breath hitches, attracting Kaytoo’s attention. The droid keeps monitoring radio signals in a background process, and moves to get a better look at him.

Cassian’s face is twisted into a grimace. Kaytoo is mulling over whether it’s bad enough for lost sleep to be preferable, and then Cassian whimpers almost silently while all his muscles contract and that decides it.

Kaytoo lays an open hand on his shoulder and gently shakes. “Cassian, wake up. You’re in a safe house on Hosnia. I’m monitoring signal chatter. You’re having a nightmare, Cassian. Wake up.”

With a twitch, Cassian’s breath evens out and his tension reduces. He’s awake, taking inventory before he opens his eyes like he always does, and Kaytoo waits, lets his fingers slowly fall to rest on his skin.

Cassian finally looks up at his partner, and relief passes over his face. He grips Kaytoo’s wrist firmly.

“Kay.”

Kaytoo closes his hand by a bare few degrees. “Cassian.”

The man sits up, clings to Kaytoo’s arm for a few moments, and then they both get back to work.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Sorry it's been longer than usual; I struggle with Spy Stuff and also needed to figure out Big Ideas and the combo made this chapter take a while. I missed this story and all of you!
> 
> Special thanks to [Artemis1000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000) for being a sounding board to help me figure out which if the many possibilities I was going to go with. 
> 
> Content warning notes at end of chapter.

“The Imperials in NiJedha have been having logistics problems lately,” Draven says, sending the reports to Cassian’s datapad. “Supplies disappeared from the loading docks. Incorrect or missing safety signage. Equipment obviously sabotaged such that it slows down work but doesn’t endanger civilians.”

Cassian scrolls through the information. “These seem awfully non-lethal for the Partisans,” he comments.

Draven nods. “Exactly. I want you to check it out, see if there’s a new player on the board, who they are, if they could be allies. It’s possible there’s just been a rash of isolated resistors, but my gut tells me it’s more organized.”

“Mine too.”

“Good. You have assets there, correct?”

“One or two,” Cassian concedes. With all the research he’s been doing, he’s going to have to lean on his main Jedhan contact heavier than normal. “With all this activity, the Empire will be cracking down. I expect the market rate for talk has gone up.”

“I’m sure it has,” Draven says, stonefaced. “You’re resourceful, you’ll figure it out.”

“Yes, sir,” Cassian says with just enough strain to make Draven think he’s worried. The spy has already memorized the identifying details of the most prominent Imperials, local officials, and unofficially influential inhabitants, some of whom could become new assets; too, the locations of the garrison, local governing buildings, and mine entrances. About the only thing he hasn’t committed to memory is the entire Imperial equipment inventory - just their tanks, gun turrets, four KX enforcer droids, and replacement parts for such.

“You have a standard week. You and your droid leave in an hour.”

Cassian salutes, sends a message to Kaytoo, slips the datapad into his jacket, and leaves.

In his quarters he allows himself a smile as he taps requisitions into his datapad. Getting sent to one of the very cities he wanted to visit is a lucky break. Not having to lie to Kay about where he’s going will make things much easier. He will have to keep Kaytoo on the ship, but that’s a normal hazard and there are plenty of good arguments he can actually make.

Requisitions sent, he packs his own gear, most of it fresh back from cleaning. It all fits neatly into a small duffel with room to spare. He tries to cram his rapidly-expanding hope down into something equally manageable.

It’s only a partial success, but he layers other emotions over what’s left, and walks to the U-wing with an expression of mild approval appropriate to his dislike of staying on base.

“Jedha is covered in _sand_ ,” Kaytoo says as soon as he’s in conversational range.

Cassian’s mouth quirks up. “It doesn’t tend to be very windy, if that helps.”

“Congratulations. Unless you actually need me on the ground, I’m staying on the ship.”

Thumping Kaytoo’s arm as he passes, Cassian tosses his gear into the hold and moves towards the copilot seat. “Don’t worry, I’ll be talking to anti-Imperials. You’ll only have to leave if there’s an emergency.”

“In that case, I’d better put my name on the oil bath queue now.”

* * *

The Temple of the Kyber and the surrounding neighborhood have been under total Imperial control since the fall of NiJedha years ago. The civilian quarter just outside of that is the closest that Cassian dares go without a solid cover and backup. He moves near-silently through the side streets in the hours just after curfew has lifted, still in the darkness of the deep shadows cast by the walls of the town and the temple itself.

He comes to a neighborhood market, stalls just being set up. To one side is a small gathering of people huddled together against the cold of the morning. They stand grouped loosely around a blind man wearing monk’s robes, and as Cassian makes a slow circuit of the square he hears them praying.

“We are one with the Force of others, and the Force of others is with us,” they chorus, and if they’re comforted by it, Cassian can’t tell. They all look about as beaten down as the rest of the Jedhan population, as hungry, as scared, but here they are, losing sleep and body heat, and for what?

Religion always makes Cassian feel like someone’s missing a very important point. He gets hope from things like relevant data and solid leads, not homily and blessings; comfort from hidden weapons and hyperjumps to random coordinates, not the idea that there’s some mystical higher power justifying everything that happens. Sometimes, when his work saves people, he gets enough absolution to last until his next regret - nothing a monk has said or done has ever made a difference. Renewal, he gets from long showers and metal hands on his skin.

For a moment he’s struck almost breathless by how much he misses Kaytoo’s solid, controlled touch. A whole lifetime of self-sufficiency hadn’t stopped Cassian from coming to need the intimacy like he needs air, and the only way he’s been able to function at all is by planning a way to get it back.

The prayers conclude, the monk passing his hands over the bowed heads of the group. Cassian pushes his feelings down and goes back to recon.

* * *

Two days later, Cassian has collected a dozen conflicting rumors and no substantiating evidence. It makes his job a little easier that there are only three credible ideas circulating: some people think a youth gang is responsible, others suspect the itinerant monks, a still another group thinks it’s an ambitious Imperial underling trying to make her superiors look bad.

He wanders the city’s central square while he waits for the evening’s gambling and drinking to start up. The day’s vendors are packing up, scavengers already picking over the market’s garbage.

A few well-placed questions lead Cassian down narrow, twisting streets to a tavern several blocks from the square. It boasts a large number of tabac vaporizers, some ornate with multiple mouthpieces, some smaller, all well-used. He puts up the credits for one with three hoses and establishes himself at a table near the wall.

It’s a little while before several young Jedhans enter, scrappy and sharp and bright-eyed, talking about a mining accident. Cassian watches them from the corner of his eyes for a while, listening.

“...and my cousin Khalil said he saw one of the Guardians near the Temple the day before.”

“Good,” another one says. “I’m glad someone isn’t too busy scrounging for their families to do something about those motherfucking Imperials.”

“I hear they’re still taking, uh, ‘donations,’” a third kid says. “Alms for the Temple.”

Cassian smiles.

“Excuse me, gentlemen, I couldn’t help but overhear that we have similar interests,” he says, smiling like he’s been drinking for longer than he has. “I’ve been looking for a worthy cause to help.”

The kids give him suspicious looks. “Who the fuck are you?” the biggest one asks.

“Rael Baca. I’m a friend of Pashta Oolani, if it helps.”

The gang’s hackles go down a little. The shortest one, who holds himself like a prince, nods at the Rebel. “I’ve heard of you,” he says, and his followers relax.

“Have a smoke, tell me more,” Cassian invites, gesturing at the hookah. “I’ve always been fascinated by spirituality.”

The leader snorts, smiling just a little, and sits.

“Oh, yeah, me too.”

* * *

The next day, just past the hour of the evening meal, he’s buying a drink for an Imperial maintenance worker. He lets her look at the list on his datapad.

“Oh, yeah, I can get you all of - wait,” she interrupts herself. Looks closer. “No, there was an explosion last week in the Temple, caught two of the droids, used up all the spare parts. There won’t be another shipment of sensors in until next month. I can get the rest of it, though.”

Cassian takes a drink to cover his anger at the Guardians’ sense of timing. It turns into a long drink while he musters the control to let only a fraction of his disappointment show - it’s better if she doesn’t know how badly he wants those parts - and negotiates her bribe down by fifteen percent. It’s not like the other items on the list aren’t things the Alliance can use.

He slides the maintenance worker half of her fee on a credit chit, arranges for a drop location, doesn’t look up as she leaves. The drink he finishes slowly to make sure no one associates them too closely. By the time he’s finished, he’s already moved from disappointment to determination. Even if they’re no longer sitting in a store room, the sensors are still in NiJedha, and his back-up plan will get them for him just the same as the original.

* * *

The Temple of the Kyber and surrounding neighborhood, the garrison, and the Capitol building are all under constant guard. Each area is patrolled to varying degrees of security: the garrison is light, but full of Stormtroopers ready to be scrambled; the Temple quarter is barricaded at all but two checkpoints, with frequent security patrols along the perimeter; and the seat of government is tight during business hours, less so during curfew. Each area has a KX droid at all times, and the fourth is on standby in the garrison due to its central location.

Cassian chooses the government buildings half an hour before curfew, when the droid will be patrolling and the streets will be full of the last-minute travelers. He’ll have to be precise with his timing, but he knows the patrol routes and has calculated (on his own, so he doesn’t trust the numbers like he would if they’d been told to him in a dry synthetic voice) that the whole operation should take about five minutes, fifteen if things go slowly.

He packs a duffle with tools and weapons, stashes a blaster in his belt and a knife and taser in his boots, a vibroblade in his sleeve, and goes to watch the sunset from the top of the town’s wall.

Jedha’s star burns gold on the horizon, cold light pouring through the plateaus and rock spires to give the stones of the city warmth and brilliance, if only for a few minutes. Cassian hopes that this will be the last day he spends terrified of Kay never feeling again.

The light deepens from gold to orange to red.

The last red fades from the sky, and Cassian slings the bag over his shoulder and climbs back down to street level.

He’s planned his route parallel to the droid’s patrol and slightly ahead. He walks like he’s oblivious to the world around him except to navigate it, a local just wanting to get home, and keeps his hands close to his weapons.

He turns from a crowded street onto an alley and pulls the blaster out. In about a minute the droid is going to come up the street at the other end. Cassian shoulders his way into an abandoned building, closes the door, then watches from the window.

That street isn’t very crowded at all, and the locals give the KX a wide berth besides. It walks stiffly, each motion precise, head turning to scan the street at regular intervals. There are no quirks or learned softness to its movements, nothing but mathematical efficiency.

The Imperial droid steps within range of the signal jammers in the basement, and Cassian flicks a remote to activate them. They’re old, the kind that emit a sound of a particular frequency along with the radio noise. The droid will have to physically disable the emitters to regain communications with any other Imperials, and it will be drawn to the right place by its audio sensors.

As he watches, the KX zeroes in on the building, ceasing its routine sweep to march purposefully towards the signal.

Good.

Cassian leaves the outer door closed but unsecured and takes his position under the basement stairs. It makes him a little nervous being boxed in, but the portable heaters he’s placed around the room are masking his infrared. The emitters are across the room, and he should get a clean shot at the droid through the steps.

It’s only half a minute or so before he hears the door open above him. He raises the blaster and waits as the steady footfalls make their way across the floor above him and to the staircase. Cassian focuses on his breathing, feeding any stray emotions into his respiratory cycle, watches the droid set foot onto the basement floor, and then he’s pulling the trigger to shoot it with the strongest ion pulse he has.

The KX freezes mid-step and topples under its own momentum. Cassian winces at the racket it makes, waits ten seconds, silently emerges from his hiding place with blaster raised. The droid is inert, eyes dark, body motionless. Cassian goes back upstairs to secure the building. When he returns, he waits another thirty seconds with his weapon trained on the droid’s core, checking for signs of rebooting, and when nothing happens he holsters the blaster and unzips the bag.

His plasma torch is designed to cut through solid sheets of durasteel. Pulling dark goggles down over his eyes and a scarf over his mouth and nose, Cassian flicks the tool on and applies the white-hot flame to the droid’s neck. The rubber casing around the joints and cables melts away near instantly, and the head comes off in his hand after about twenty seconds. A bit of tension uncoils from his chest now that the droid itself is no longer a threat.

He doesn’t even have time to process relief; the familiar shape of the droid’s head cupped in his hands combines with the feel of it separated from its body into a flash of horror. Cassian throws it down reflexively, watches it skid across the floor before stopping to rock back and forth on the curve of its skull.

Breathing too fast, he turns away, fixes his gaze on the staircase, curls and uncurls his fists. It’s not Kay, Cassian knows it’s not. Kay is back on the ship, probably bored out of his circuits.

Cassian takes a long, steadying breath, shoves the revulsion to the back of his mind, and goes back to the body. It’s a little better than the head. The red bands at its shoulders and the unmarred plating are easy visual distinctions.

He starts cutting the right forearm. The torch passes through the plating, then the wiring and hydraulics of the arm. He brings the tool around the arm to the point where it began, fire inching closer and closer to the glowing edge, and Cassian grabs the wrist just before the arm is completely severed.

Next he brings the torch up to the droid’s left forearm. He hesitates, remembering, and then starts in on the elbow instead.

Despite being pure durasteel, that actually goes faster, thanks to the joint’s hollow design. Cassian sets the second forearm to cool, bags the first, and goes for the left shoulder joint. Taking the whole upper arm for one small component is far from efficient, but it’s the fastest way and he isn’t sure how close he can bring the torch without damaging the sensor.

Now both hands are in the bag and he can leave. His recon estimates about twenty minutes between the droid losing transmission capabilities and someone coming to look for it, another five or ten before they find the right building. Regardless of time, the Empire will find their machine, report the damage, replace what Cassian took, and everything will be back to normal.

Except - reports of stolen droid parts will heighten Imperial scrutiny of Kaytoo on undercover missions. Cassian doesn’t like the idea of the KX’s resources remaining in Imperial hands, either.

It would be better on both counts if he kept dismantling ( _dismembering,_ his mind whispers before he silences it) the chassis until it was a heap of parts scavengers could make off with. Better to leave something that would look more like vandalism and less like someone needed parts for their stolen Imperial droid. And with the chassis in pieces, the Empire would probably just replace the droid, whether or not the datacore was intact. That’s several thousand credits that wouldn’t be spent on more dangerous weapons.

He checks his chrono. It’s been seven minutes. He settles the bag on his back, strap across his chest, ready to run.

Swallowing his bile, he returns to work, looking at only the few inches of metal in front of the torch flame. He drags the tool through leg joints and across abdominal cables, drives it into the chest casing over and over, shears off antenna. When he’s done, he just stops and stares even though the pile of droid parts with glowing melted edges is nothing he should spend any time looking at.

 _Are you sure nightmares bother you? Your behavior suggests otherwise,_ a dry mental voice says.

Snorting, Cassian turns his back. His gaze lands on the head on the other side of the room.

The Empire will find it, datamine it, and dispose of it. It would be kinder of Cassian to destroy the core himself. He takes a step towards it, torch ready, but doesn’t crouch down to reach it. There are some outer differences between Kaytoo and this KX, enough that the earlier horror doesn’t return, but thoughts that have never occurred to Cassian before are crowding in.

Kaytoo once compared obedience programming to the mental conditioning used on Stormtroopers: Cassian’s reprogramming hadn’t created Kaytoo, it had freed him. For the first time, Cassian realizes that killing the KX would be killing a slave, and the idea of driving the plasma through its central processor makes his hands feel heavy.

Unlike a Stormtrooper, however, Cassian could take the core with him. There’s still room in his bag.

But this stolen KX would just be a hard drive. Without a strategically-useful chassis, the Alliance would treat it no better than the Empire, so unless Cassian did it himself, no one would go to the trouble of reprogramming it, much less find it hardware.

Well, no one in the Alliance. If he told Jastha that he’d stolen parts - just parts - and then, months later, sent her the core with some banthashit story of how he got it that didn’t involve him dismembering the droid, then maybe that would work. Jastha could even jailbrake it herself. Find or build it a chassis.

It would be a hard life, stuck without its original chassis and in a place that had no use for most of its programming. It might turn to banditry or bounty-hunting, and wasn’t Casian supposed to be making the galaxy better?

He shakes himself. He’s going to have to think about this more, and he needs to leave right now.

The back of the skull plate opens easily under his multi-tool, and he reaches inside to pry out the tracking device. Closes the head again. Puts it in the duffle, re-slings the bag on his shoulders, and takes the stairs.

He checks the time before ducking into the alley. Twelve minutes before curfew.

Listening, he hears nothing outside. He slips out, makes his way to the same end of the alley originally entered, takes stock. The crowd is thinner than before, and people are more hurried, trying to make their homes before curfew. He spots Stormtrooper white a couple of blocks ahead, and takes a turn.

There are more troopers as he makes his way back to the rented room he’s been using as a base, and it takes him a little longer than normal to dodge them.

There’s one minute left when he steps past the threshold of the hostel. The elderly man running the place gives Cassian an annoyed look, but says nothing. The Rebel winces apologetically.

Once he’s in his room with the door locked behind him, short-range signal jammer running and windows all covered, he opens the bag.

The head unsettles him all over again, and it occurs to him that he’s done something Kay might find horrific. Dread washes up Cassian’s body and digs icy fingers into his stomach, and he finds himself wishing he’d just waited for the next shipment of parts. What if Kaytoo can’t forgive him?

Kay’s been angry with him plenty of times, but never horrified. Organic senses of right and wrong just haven’t mattered much to K-2SO - honestly, organics as a whole don’t matter much to him. Just Cassian.

But this is different. A droid, and not just any droid, but a KX, the closest thing Kay has to a species. If he’s going to be disturbed by anything, it’s this.

Cassian isn’t sure he could take it if Kay were horrified. He thinks - he hopes - that Kaytoo won’t be. But he can’t be sure until his partner finds out.

* * *

“No,” the monk says.

Cassian, worn out from his sleepless night of relationship angst, purses his lips. “Why not?”

“Jedha was an independent world,” she says. Cassian can’t tell her age, but at least a generation older than him. Black hair. Tall and wiry. “We want no part in any Republic, old or new.”

The Rebel scrubs a hand through his hair. “I understand; my homeworld was CIS. But you’re certainly not independent now. We can help each other.”

“I’m sure we can,” she says, still irritatingly serene, “but if your Alliance did win, what then? The Empire has already taken so much from us. If we do it alone our independence will be one of the few things we’ll still have.”

Shaking his head, Cassian sighs wearily. “Look, I won’t bother you any more, but if you change your mind, you can contact me through Riti Shaikh.”

The monk nods. “I’ll remember that. Fare you well.”

With a single, jerky nod, Cassian leaves, disappointment and hope both burning in his chest.

 _Please let this trip not be a total loss,_ he thinks. _Please let me have not made a terrible mistake with Kay._

* * *

 

 

> “Jedha does not express faith and the Force through its pilgrims; pilgrims express faith and the Force through Jedha. Pilgrims express faith and the Force through life....Through the Force and Jedha, they will act as they must, for good and ill. And we will know them by their actions there.”
> 
> \--Alexander Freed, _Rogue One_ novelization

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: graphic violence against droids.


	21. Chapter 21

K-2SO is bored.

It’s been seventy-eight hours since Cassian left the U-wing, and Kaytoo finished all the on-board tasks in the first ten. The next sixty-eight have been punctuated only by the _riveting_ pick-up of contraband at one of Cassian’s drop points and the daily change of the ship’s location. He might start disassembling parts of the ship if this continues much longer.

Instead, he uses local weather reports and geological data to calculate just how much sand he can expect to get stuck in his joints and vents if he leaves the ship and walks to the city. If the prevailing winds stay more or less consistent, he estimates about twelve percent of the grit that accosted him during the sandstorm on Samovar. Based on that, going outside will be worse than the boredom for approximately five more hours, at which point he'll go find Cassian and have a sixty-three percent chance of the spy integrating him into the mission. The other thirty-seven percent involves K-2SO getting sent back to the ship, but at least he will have killed a hour or two on travel and getting yelled at.

The ship’s comm crackles. “Kaytoo, come in. Come in Kay.” Cassian’s voice is tired, but he doesn’t sound like he’s in pain, so if he has injuries they’re minor. That’s good to hear.

“I read you, Cassian. Are you finished?”

“Yes. Rendezvous in five minutes.”

“Acknowledged,” Kaytoo replies. Thank the maker.

He lands the U-wing behind a small outcropping of stones just outside the city, not even turning off the engines as his partner is already there. Kaytoo takes them up, listening as Cassian sets his gear down, takes off his coat, and sits down in the copilot seat to write up his mission report.

“Any injuries?” Kaytoo asks as he starts the hyper jump calculations, eyes roving over Cassian. His thermal pattern is normal for having come in from the cold and he isn’t obviously bleeding. Kay won’t be able to tell any more without closer inspection.

“No,” the spy answers. “No injuries, no drugs, pretty sure no illness. I even ate a few hours ago,” and here his lips quirk up.

Kaytoo rolls his optics as he pulls the hyperthrottle. “That still leaves a number of concerning possibilities. I notice you haven’t slept.”

Cassian sighs, keeps working. It’s unusual; normally he comms back to base when he first gets on the ship, and saves the written report for after the shower or even the in-person debrief. “Not last night. I did the other two nights, though,” he says distractedly.

Kaytoo, satisfied that the ship is safely on course, turns to his partner. He knows Cassian can see him at the edges of his vision but he hasn’t reacted to the change in posture. Clearly the man is determined to finish his task. Kay is curious about the mission, but he’s willing to put off asking since visually documenting Cassian’s state is much more interesting than anything he’s had to do for the last three days.

The man’s face, neck and hands have warmed up in the ship’s controlled temperature, and his body heat is starting to saturate his shirt. The lack of rest shows in the dark circles under his eyes, the slowness of his movements. His face is darker by a very slight margin; he spent some time outdoors, but not much.

When he can learn no more from simply looking, Kaytoo asks, “Who was it?”

Dragging a hand through limp hair, Cassian sighs. “The Guardians of the Whills, from the Temple before the occupation. They said no. Didn’t want to owe anyone interested in a republic.” He purses his lips, scrolls up through his report to check it, then saves it. He doesn’t transmit.

They still have three days left on their allotted time, Kaytoo realizes. Before the fire, he’d have expected Cassian to want to spend those days all over each other.

Now, he isn’t so sure. Now they avoid contact as long as possible and then come together when one of them can’t stand being separate any longer. It probably helps Cassian pretend that nothing is wrong, and with Kaytoo’s grief nothing is casual any more.

Or maybe it’s just that the frustration and longing interfere with each other enough to blunt their edges.

Kaytoo wants to be intimate with Cassian. He’ll always want to; no matter how many times he stops those processes, they always start up again. Cassian does too, but the spy is so good at burying his feelings that it might not make much difference.

The man stands up, puts the datapad away, and goes to shower.

Kaytoo stays where he is, staring into hyperspace while he predicts reasons for his partner’s unfamiliar behavior. He’s only been doing that for about ten minutes when Cassian re-emerges clean and dressed. Cassian doesn’t take his seat, though. He just stands for several minutes in the middle of the ship.

Kaytoo finally gets up and stands to face Cassian. He’s staring at the duffle bag he left on the deck.

“Cassian?”

He looks up at Kaytoo. His jaw is tight like it is when he’s been given orders he doesn’t like. This reaction was only part of six percent of the scenarios K-2SO projected.

“Kay, I...I might have made a mistake. A big one.” His eyes make contact, then skate away from Kaytoo’s.

The droid tilts his head. “Even if you did, it doesn’t sound like the Guardians would have been willing to join us. And we made a clean exit.”

Cassian shakes his head. “It’s not the mission. Or at least, not Draven’s mission.”

Kaytoo feels an unpleasant activation of subroutines, an entirely new realm of possibilities opening up, and he likes none of them. Cassian watches him with a calculating look, and something else in his eyes, too. K-2SO can’t define it and that makes him worry even more.

“What other mission was there?” Perhaps Mothma herself had given him a secret mission? Unlikely, but better than the alternative possibilities.

The other part of Cassian’s expression becomes more prominent, and K-2SO can see that it’s fear. It’s not an expression Kaytoo has had the opportunity to see very often, the spy being an expert at hiding it, but either Cassian is letting him see it or the emotion is too great to mask.

This situation has become very alarming.

Cassian swallows. “I just...please understand.” He has to take a breath. “I thought I was helping.”

Dread fizzes through Kaytoo’s circuits as Cassian picks up the duffle and hands it to him. K-2SO notes the unexpected weight of it, sets it on one of the jump seats as carefully and deliberately as he can, eking out a few seconds of delay.

A hundred scenarios flowing through his circuits, each more awful than the last, Kaytoo unzips the bag. In addition to Cassian’s usual gear there are two unknown objects of equal size wrapped in clothing. Kaytoo picks one up, and yes, that’s where a lot of the new weight is from. It shifts slightly in his grasp, like there are moving parts.

Kaytoo’s emotions are jerked in another direction as his central processor begins a scenario he hadn’t seriously considered before. There’s only a one point zero six chance that the object he’s peeling Cassian’s spare shirt from is what he wants it to be, but even such a small number can spark hope. He doesn’t like that, either, most of him sure that disappointment will follow.

But the shirt falls away, and one point zero six becomes a hundred percent.

It’s a KX hand.  

“You got replacements.” Disbelief, joy, desire, affection, relief - all surge through his systems like he’s touched the contacts of a power coupling. He’s shaking with it, almost wishing he could run to steer the discharge of energy. “You got replacements! Cassian, this is - I thought we’d never - how did you even -”

Cassian’s apprehension deepens with that question, and Kaytoo stops. Is it--

Ah. Yes. There’s a trace of old grease on the inside of the wrist joint, and upon closer inspection Kaytoo can see that there’s some wear on the palm. Cassian didn’t get this from a shelf.

K-2SO simulates: the spy shooting a KX in some back alley of NiJedha, using his toolkit to remove the hands.

No. A blaster is too loud and hydrospanners are too slow.

Another: Cassian lures the droid somewhere secluded first, then shoots it, then uses, what, a vibrosaw? No, again too noisy. A plasma torch? More likely. The image of Cassian melting his way through the KX’s arms creates painful feedback in K-2SO, so he shoves the idea aside. He places the hand back in the bag almost as roughly.

He has never, before now, understood what organics felt when they talked about horror. It’s like his circuits are trying to physically purge the offending data.

Now Cassian’s behavior makes sense.

“Where’s the rest of him?” K-2SO asks softly.

Grimace twisting into deeper distress, gaze fixed on Kaytoo’s shoulder, Cassian nevertheless manages to speak clearly. “I left most of the chassis in pieces in a basement. A few other parts in an alley this morning.” He gestures at the bag. “The optics and atmospheric sensors are in there, along with the other hand and the central processing core.” Now he looks at Kaytoo, just briefly, eyes desperate before he looks away again.

For a long moment Kaytoo thinks, watching Cassian start to pace as the rate of his respiration increases. The droid’s processes are starting to resolve one by one, and he doesn’t feel the need to escape his own thoughts any more.

“Were you planning to reprogram him, too?” Kaytoo says.

Cassian drags a hand through his hair. “I was going to leave it- him there, at first. Then I thought letting the Empire have the core would be worse than if I...but I didn’t. I knew I could take ... him with me and make that decision later.” Dark eyes stare at the duffle. “I had the whole thing planned out but I didn’t stop to ask myself if I should do it until after I’d started.”

Something ugly flares in Kaytoo’s central processor. “I suppose Draven usually does that for you.”

“You know that’s not true,” Cassian snarls, glare unable to disguise his hurt. “Just because I follow orders and you don’t - ” He slashes the air with a gesture, and then the anger is gone again. The man collapses into a jump seat and leans his elbows on his knees. “Just...tell me, Kay. Did I ruin everything?”

Kaytoo looks down at Cassian’s bowed head, the already-small organic made smaller by his posture and more fragile by his emotional state. Kay feels opposing desires to soothe and exacerbate the human’s distress, but more than either of those he wants to resolve the conflict in his own circuits.

“How you got the parts bothers me, and I don’t understand why,” Kaytoo says, frustrated. “I don’t feel pain, and my body is modular, so the dismantling of it for maintenance can’t disturb me on the same deep level that it would in an organic. My awareness of injury and death remains constant, so it isn’t as if seeing unattached parts would increase that feeling. And within a series, parts are interchangeable; they become mine upon installation.” He clenches his fists. “It could be that familiarity with our hardware and software makes my projections of the scenario much more detailed than they would be otherwise.”

Cassian looks up at Kaytoo with pained eyes. “I’m sorry.”

The droid shakes his head, throws his hands in the air. “But why should that matter? Many other detailed simulations don’t bother me.”

Cassian’s gaze holds his for a second, then drops. “When I see or think about bad things happening to other organics, especially other humans,” he says, voice low and flat, “in some ways it’s like they’re happening to me.”

Kaytoo pauses. It’s appalling, but he simulates Cassian doing the same violence directly to Kaytoo, and his reaction isn’t much more pronounced than his earlier simulations of the KX.

He’d like to delete both experiences, but he’s fairly sure he’ll need them later.

“I don’t think I like empathy,” he says at last. Both he and Cassian are still. “It’s very unpleasant.”

“Yeah,” Cassian agrees, that one syllable somehow freighted with years of weariness.

An awful thought occurs to Kaytoo, though it's not a surprise, not really - he’s known from the start that Cassian regrets much of what he’d done for the rebellion.

It’s just that this is the first time he has the context to understand ‘regret’ on an emotional level.

“You feel this for your targets.”

Cassian’s eyes go distant. “Not as many as I should.”

Kaytoo makes a disgusted noise. “Stop martyring yourself. It doesn’t help anyone,” he huffs, and turns around before he can see Cassian’s reaction.

He goes back to the duffle and fishes out the central processing core. Thankfully, the face and skull plates are gone, so it looks as little like a head as it can while still being in one piece. He realizes Cassian must have spend at least some of his night on trying to make it less disturbing.

He must have spent a lot of time, a lot of resources on the whole thing. Finding out which Imperial outposts had KX droids. Narrowing down the list. Making plans and back-up plans. Keeping it all a secret even from Kaytoo, presumably to spare him disappointment if it failed. All of it so Kaytoo could get sensation back. So they could get the ease and depth of their intimacy back.

Meticulous, reckless, totally committed, selfless and selfish all at once. Kay can’t think of a more Cassian-like thing to do and the knowledge fills him with enough affection to feel like it should overload his systems.

K-2SO wants to test the core, hook up an isolated computer console to see about reprogramming the other KX, but they can do that at any time. Setting the KX back in the bag, he turns around.

Cassian has been staring at him. He doesn’t look away this time.

“Objectively speaking,” Kaytoo says, “you didn’t make the other KX’s situation worse. Depending on what happens, you might have improved it.”

The human’s expression brightens, just a little. Kay steps within reach.

“I’m angry with you for putting yourself in danger without telling me, of course, but that’s hardly an unfamiliar feeling,” he continues, and Cassian ducks his head with a chagrined smile. K-2SO rolls his eyes.

“What’s more important to me,” he says, bringing a hand to the man’s face, and if he can’t really feel the texture of Cassian’s skin he can still perceive exactly how responsive he is to Kay's touch, “is that I’ll have fine sensation back.” Now, now the negative feedback has finally stopped, and Kaytoo is left with feelings of joy, anticipation, love.

Cassian sags in relief and tears spring to his eyes.

He blinks them away and smiles hugely as he leans into Kaytoo’s hand. His voice is shaky, delighted. “I’ll get the tools.”

Kaytoo scoffs affectionately. “You’ll get some sleep,” he corrects. “You’re not allowed out of your berth for at least four hours.”

Huffing a laugh, Cassian covers Kaytoo’s hand with his own. “All right.”

When Cassian lays down, the droid sits on the decking next to his berth. He keeps one arm around his partner, their hands clasped loosely. Cassian drifts to sleep more quickly than usual, and Kaytoo is pleased.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Little bit of violence against droids in the first bit.

A long row of KX droids, standing perfectly still, all inert. Cassian walks down it, tries to find distinguishing signs, fails.

“Kay? Where are you?”

There’s no answer. He ducks between two droids, finds another row behind them, and another after that. There’s so many. So many parts. Kaytoo only needs two of them; stealing two of thousands is hardly a big deal, right?

Cassian stops. There’s a plasma torch in his hand, and he turns to the nearest KX. Starts cutting.

The hand comes off in his. He’s still watching the glow of heat fade from the edges when the droid wakes up.

“This is abhorrent, even for you,” Kaytoo says, examining the stump of his arm. Contempt drips from his voice. “And stupid. You could have at least done your research.”

“No, I didn’t...I didn’t mean to...Kay, I’m sorry,” Cassian is saying, throat too tight for words to pass comfortably. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll fix you, I’ll get another arm, I’m sorry.”

“From where?” Kaytoo asks, scathing, making a wide gesture with his remaining hand. There’s nothing but empty space around them.

“I’ll find another,” Cassian promises, but Kaytoo steps away.

“I think I’ll take my chances elsewhere,” he says, and then he, too, disappears. It feels like he leaves a hole in Cassian’s chest.

Clutching Kay’s arm to himself, Cassian flings the torch away, but his hand connects with the back of his berth on the ship. Blinking awake, breathing hard, Cassian tries to ground himself.

The metal arm around his waist almost makes him jump out of his skin, but then the limb curls around him, pulls him against a solid chest. Shaking, Cassian turns over, presses his forehead to the coolness of Kaytoo’s plating as the droid murmurs reassuring facts. Hard fingers trail softly against his hair and he takes shelter in his partner’s body.

Then Cassian remembers - he hasn’t ruined their relationship. Kaytoo accepted the replacement parts. In less than an hour Kay will be able to feel again, and the horror of Cassian’s nightmare falls away along with his weariness. He pulls back to look Kaytoo in the optics.

“How long did I sleep?”

Kaytoo tilts his head, examining Cassian. “Long enough,” he pronounces, and Cassian finds himself smiling. He isn’t the only impatient one.

Cassian eats the ration bar shoved into his hand, fills a canteen, uses the refresher. He and Kaytoo sit facing each other on the deck, tools spread around them on the floor, replacement hands resting to one side.

“I think it will be most efficient to just switch the whole hand,” Kaytoo says.

Cassian nods. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

Opening up K-2SO’s forearm, Cassian reaches in to unscrew the endcap of the radial axis. The space inside Kay’s arm is small enough to make this awkward, the kind of thing he’d use a special tool for back on the base, but he manages bare-handed, if slowly. Once that part’s finally done he removes the bolts holding the joint in place. When the wrist and hand are ready to ease out of the arm in a single piece, Cassian is already cradling them in his lap.

Kay pulls his arm back to give Cassian more space to work. It’s a little unnerving but concentrating on the work helps him ignore the feeling.

After he loosens the two parts of the joint, the silver ring of Kaytoo’s wrist segments into three parts, and Cassian carefully removes the hand. This he sets aside, then takes up the replacement and, after smearing grease on the inside of all three interlocking pieces, performs the same actions in reverse.

Kaytoo runs through all his basic motion commands: radial twists, lateral swivels, extension and flexion of each finger separately and in concert, making a fist, picking up a tool, placing it back down.

“The maintenance regimen on Jedha is up to Imperial standards, it seems,” K-2SO comments. “Movement is smooth and responsive.”

“Good,” Cassian says. “And the sensors?”

“The circuits are all in order,” Kaytoo answers. “I’m going to wait to activate them until you’re done.”  

Cassian nods, tries to quash his urgency, and starts on Kay’s other wrist.

“Actually,” Kaytoo says, “When this is finished I want you to remove the failsafe, and after that I’ll test the sensors.”

Cassian nods, absorbed in the work. A moment later the words sink in and his breath hitches. He raises his head to find Kaytoo already looking at his face and feels strangely shy.

“Ah... Send a photo of it to my datapad - you do have pictures, right? - and one of the hedonic processor by itself.” He looks away to clear his throat and goes back to freeing Kaytoo’s wrist joint from his arm.

Kaytoo tilts his head a degree or two. “No arguments for sensible precautions against temptation?”

“At this point,” Cassian says, removing the bolts and trying not to care what his face is doing, “erring on the side of too much pleasure seems like a better idea to me.”

“I haven’t yet projected any realistic scenarios that involve too much pleasure,” Kaytoo says steadily, and Cassian looks up at this. The droid’s optics hold his gaze. “Not with you.”

Heat rushes to Cassian’s face, and then more, knowing what it looks like to Kay. Then a slow, wicked smile spreads across his face. “We have three days. I’m going to see if that’s true.”

Kaytoo’s cooling system whirrs satisfyingly loudly.

“My projections have a ninety-one percent accuracy rate,” Kay says, mock-offended.

Cassian just keeps smiling and goes back to the work of replacement. From its place in the cockpit, the data pad chimes softly.

After Cassian finishes, he goes to clean the grease from his hands and then to grab his datapad. The hedonic processor’s circuits are made of ordinary materials, but their structure is new to Cassian, almost fractal, and he finds himself a little fascinated. The failsafe is soldered to the processor like an insect on a leaf, and he studies it while Kaytoo cleans his new hands.

Cassian walks back over, takes out the soldering iron, and sits cross-legged on a jump seat. He gestures to the spot of decking in front of him, and Kaytoo folds his considerable frame to sit with his back against Cassian’s knees.

He lets his hand linger on Kaytoo’s shoulder. “Ready when you are.”

“Saving temporary memory,” Kay says, then sits a little straighter. “And... shutting down.”

Only a few components stay active. Cassian hasn’t seen him do this in months, and it makes him aware of all the little sounds that the droid’s body normally produces. It’s a little like seeing an organic in a bacta coma.

Feeling the particular solitude of being the only conscious being on a ship in deep space, Cassian opens K-2SO’s skull plate.

It’s been over a year since he got a good look at this part of Kay. His circuitry is a little like the capillaries of leaves, or like dendrites, or like the microscopic structure of minerals; but most of all it is itself, that which contains K-2SO’s powerful elegance of thought and needling humor. The arrangement of components is less beautiful, transistors dotting the motherboard in almost-symmetry and various upgrades throwing off the visual balance, but that’s fitting, too, and Cassian finds himself fond of all of it.

Using one hand braced on Kaytoo’s shoulder to steady the other, Cassian touches the hot iron to the solder attaching the failsafe, melting it and pulling it off a drop at a time.

He loses track of time like that, making sure the iron touches only what he wants it to. When the last of the solder is gone, he reaches in with a pair of tweezers and pulls out the failsafe. He sets it on the same seat as Kaytoo’s old hands.

Cassian checks to make sure everything in Kay’s head is as it should be, blasts it with compressed air, and closes up the plating. He’s as conscientious about putting the equipment away as he always is; getting the right tool quickly has proven to be important more than once.

Then he kneels in front of Kaytoo and touches his shoulder.

“Wake up, Kay,” he says, one of their few voice commands. “It’s done.”

Cassian hears his partner’s drives and motors and fans engaging one by one. He no longer feels alone.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut. Like, so much.

K-2SO boots up, systems coming online sequentially. His optics activate to Cassian sitting on his heels in front of him.

“Hey,” the human says, not expecting a response, biting his lip while his eyes dart over Kaytoo. His hands are in fists on his thighs while he waits.

Kaytoo runs a diagnostic as soon as basic systems are up. Everything comes back within parameters; the failsafe has been successfully removed, and with no small amount of satisfaction, he archives the movement subroutines he wrote for the damaged hands and re-installs his originals. There will be no second re-adjustment period.

He activates the sensors in his hands. It’s been so long since he could feel the external air temperature that having it back is like abruptly entering an extreme environment after leaving the climate control of the ship. Currently the life support is producing the most efficient habitable temperature, and Kaytoo hopefully (with a very high likelihood of being proved correct) adjusts it upwards by a few degrees.

K-2SO trusts his subroutines, but just in case the new hands are somehow different, he picks up the failsafe chip. His fingers clasp the tiny device, grip neither too loose nor too tight, and then he tosses it between his hands, catching it safely each time. He can feel the edges of it precisely, the little teeth of connection pins, all of it in much finer detail than he’d been capable of twenty minutes prior.

“Everything doing what it should?” his partner asks, thumb worrying over his knuckles.

“Yes,” Kaytoo says, chucks the failsafe over his shoulder, turns on the hedonic processor for the first time in weeks, and reaches for Cassian.

He cups his lover’s face and, hedonic at full power, is plunged into a torrent of tactile data. The very particular softness and warmth of Cassian’s skin, the rougher but not unpleasant texture of his beard, the shifting of tiny muscles as he smiles; all of it is wonderfully subtle and complex, and all of it sparks Kaytoo’s fierce joy and deep, swelling tenderness. He floats amidst the rush of exultation and it occurs to him that in the form of data, a small part of Cassian is alive in his circuits.

All the while, the man himself is looking at Kaytoo with such softness in his eyes that the droid doesn’t have to guess what he’s feeling.

For a timeless moment, they’re motionless, suspended, and then as if they’d planned it they fall together, Cassian surging forward and Kaytoo pulling him into his lap. Cassian strokes his chest plating, caresses his arms, slots fingers into the back of his neck joints, and the urgency of his touch excites Kay, sensors or not. At the same time Kaytoo is sliding his hands underneath his lover’s shirt, taking in every inch of sweet skin over muscle, over bone, smooth and scarred alike. The pleasure sings through his central processing core, brightening himself and Cassian and turning everything else into background.

One of his hands finds its way into Cassian’s hair. It’s just long enough for Kaytoo to run his fingers through the strands, massaging Cassian’s scalp as he goes, and the man practically purrs. Kay himself could get lost in the warmth and the whispering slide of organic material over his plating, but he saves the idea for later. Now he wants everything all at once.

Reveling in the precision of his control, Kaytoo tightens his grip. Cassian gasps, the sound setting off a cascade of processes that feed into the tactile dataset and increase Kaytoo’s pleasure. He pulls backwards, carefully, and Cassian’s spine arches, showing the long line of his throat.

“Kay,” he says, voice husky, almost a groan, and Kaytoo feels like he’s flying as he traces his fingertips over Cassian’s lips. The man’s mouth falls open at the touch and he tries to lean forward in the droid’s grip, can’t, makes a hungry noise. That’s another sound that moves through Kaytoo like liquid fire, his processes speeding up even more, and he obliges Cassian, slides the pad of one finger past the man’s lips and onto his tongue.

He is only a little shocked when the supple wet heat of Cassian’s mouth immediately brings the symphony to a crescendo of bliss. His optics unfocus, body freezes, internal components shudder with the pleasure, and it’s a moment before he registers the sight of Cassian in his lap, half a smile on his face, cheek pressed against the hand he’d been mouthing. His hair is still trapped in Kaytoo’s other hand but he seems more impatient than distressed, caressing every part of Kay that he can reach.

When Kaytoo regains the control to release him, Cassian slides forward to kiss his face all over, run his hands over metal shoulders and chest.

“Stars, I missed that,” he murmurs. “Missed making you feel so good.”

Kaytoo is still floating, but that doesn’t decrease his desire or even his urgency, only makes it easier to bear. He removes Cassian’s shirt, then unbuckles his belt and takes the pants, too, enjoying the way his body heat flares hottest at his arousal and radiates outward, how it’s seeping into Kaytoo’s plating.

“We need condoms and lubricant,” Kaytoo says, and Cassian nods, makes for the berth, doesn’t fall or run into anything but it looks like a near thing. He’s back in seconds and drops the items on the floor next to Kaytoo before sliding into the droid’s lap again.

Kay runs his hands all over Cassian, pleasure resonating through every part of him.

“Open yourself up,” Kaytoo says, and Cassian groans. “I don’t think I have the patience to do it right.”

“You think I do?” the man scoffs, coating his fingers.

“No, but your hands are softer and smaller than mine,” K-2SO points out.

“True.”

Kaytoo strokes Cassian’s chest, as the man rises up on his knees, bites his lips, and pushes a finger into himself. With a firm caress, the droid’s hands settle on Cassian’s hips, fingertips pressed against the iliac crests, thumbs sweeping in slow arcs up and down the hollows in front. Cassian’s eyes, dark and intense, are locked onto Kay.

When Cassian’s finger slides all the way in, Kaytoo picks up a condom one-handed. He holds his lover steady so he can roll the latex over the man’s still-growing cock, and Cassian breathes faster, his whole body shuddering at the touch.

“Kay,” he whispers, working his finger around. Then he pulls back and adds another, pushes in faster this time. He winces, and Kaytoo lays a hand on his wrist to still him.

“Don’t hurt yourself.”

“I’m _not_ ,” Cassian says, no less annoyed for his breathlessness. He sinks down onto his fingers, and Kay could stop him, but they’re both impatient and aroused and watching Cassian stretch himself for Kaytoo is throwing fuel on the fire.

While Cassian works, Kaytoo slides his hands over the man’s legs, stomach, chest, shoulders, delighting in them and in how Cassian responds, with little moans deep in his throat, by leaning into the metal as it roams. When his lover is looking more comfortable, the droid picks up the lubricant for his own hands, uses enough to drip some on the deck.

“Now,” Cassian demands, and removes his fingers. Kaytoo is ready with his own, pushes up into him, feels a new wave of bliss wash over him in the form of heat and clinging pressure. He stops at Cassian’s sharp intake of breath, watches his face slowly relax, starts pushing again when he nods. With his other arm he holds Cassian, supporting him, revelling in their closeness.

“Cassian,” he murmurs. “Force. I thought I’d lost this. It hurt so much thinking I’d never feel you like this again.” The man trembles in Kaytoo’s hold, hands tightening on metal shoulders, and he comes to rest on Kay’s lap, body stretched around durasteel fingers, forehead pressed against Kaytoo’s, mouth open to pant heavily, breath warming the droid’s face plate.

“I knew,” he manages after a moment. “I knew there was a way. Couldn’t - oh - couldn’t let it go if there was a way.”

“You’re impossibly stubborn,” Kaytoo agrees fondly, free hand sliding up Cassian’s back.

The man smiles. “You love it.”

“In this case,” Kaytoo concedes. Cassian’s adjusting, and the droid judges that he can start moving his fingers in a careful circular motion to speed up the process. He bites his lip as his hands tighten on Kay’s shoulders. Again, for the dozenth time, Kaytoo wonders at the fact that as high as he’s flying on the hedonic data, as much pleasure is buzzing in his circuits, it wouldn’t be nearly as good without Cassian’s desire and pleasure and responses.

Kaytoo curls his fingers, and Cassian moans. Kay respondes in kind and nudges his lover upwards. Cassian is immediately on board, hips rising and falling in a rolling motion as he rides Kaytoo’s hand.

“Yes, Cassian, like that,” he encourages. The droid can feel the slick ripples of his lover’s body, the elasticity of his muscles, and the delicious heat, somehow all-consuming for how moderate a temperature it is. It builds on the pleasure of afterglow, like the layers of imagery necessary for humans to view a nebula: Cassian taking him in, sliding off of him but not all the way, returning, gasping and moaning when Kaytoo angles his fingers just right, hands scrabbling against his plating, murmuring his name, cock bobbing, muscles tensing.

A star in the nebula brightens, sparks, explodes. The nova overtakes Kaytoo, and again he perceives nothing but ecstasy.

“Cassian,” he murmurs as soon as he can. His optics still aren’t quite operational; he wonders why the reboot is different this time, though he isn’t concerned.

“Got you again, did I?” Cassian answers, caressing his face plate. Kaytoo can hear the self-satisfied smirk in Cassian’s voice, but everything is a song, a glow, too lovely to feel annoyed.

“It’s different this time,” he answers, happy. “I wonder if other second orgasms will be like this one.”

“Sounds like we’ll need more data,” his lover answers, and finally Kay’s optics come online. Cassian is settled on his lap, Kaytoo’s fingers still inside him, eyes half-amused and half-lust-blown, cock a little less hard than before Kay’s orgasm.

“You still haven’t orgasmed,” Kaytoo observes.

Cassian laughs. “I need a little more time between mine than you do,” he says. “I want to make it last.”

Kaytoo’s motor control returns, and he curls his fingers, making Cassian moan and rock his hips. It’s highly satisfactory.

The droid loses track of how long they spend like that, only knows that he has another orgasm before Cassian swears, starts riding Kaytoo fast, strokes his cock two or three times and then shakes apart with a long moan. It pushes the droid to the edge of his own climax yet again, and he keeps pumping into his lover’s body, falling into rushing bliss at the sound of Cassian’s overstimulated shouts.

This time, the motor control returns before the optics or vocabulator, and Kaytoo blindly, gently slides his fingers free, wipes them clean, strokes his lover’s hair as they both reboot.

“Are you alright?” Kaytoo asks as soon as he’s able.

“Mm,” Cassian grunts, nodding while tucked under Kaytoo’s chin. “You can keep going if you want.”

“This isn’t some endurance test,” Kaytoo admonishes. “This is supposed to be enjoyable for us both.”

“I enjoyed it,” Cassian assures him. “I only just remembered my own name.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Kaytoo says.

“I mean it. Fuck me like that more often.”

Even as awash in pleasure as he is, the idea gives Kaytoo a thrill. Adjusting his grip to support his lover’s weight, he stands up, goes to the berth, and once again drags the bedding to the floor. He resettles, lays Cassian on his back, kneels next to him.

Cassian is smiling up at him, looking happier than Kaytoo’s ever seen him before, and the droid knows that of all the moments he’s just recorded, this, this is going to be the one he plays back over and over and over. He presses fingers to Cassian’s lips, and his lover kisses back, sweetly, dark lashes brushing his cheeks.

He kisses Cassian again, and again, and soon the kisses are wet and hot, soon Cassian is licking and sucking and nibbling, and he is surprised by yet another orgasm, this one combining elements of the others, his ecstasy no higher than it was after the third. That’s fine with him, there is a limit, after all, and it wouldn’t take much more pleasure to incapacitate him. He wants to be here, now, with Cassian.

The human delights in his power to give pleasure with his lips and teeth and tongue, and he uses it. Kaytoo loses track of time, they both do, but enough of it passes that Cassian starts to get hard again. Kaytoo takes his hand out of his lover’s mouth long enough to get another condom, long enough to lube his fingers again, and then he’s sliding back into Cassian with both fingers because he's still loose enough not to need preparation this time.

“Fuck,” Cassian says. “Fuck, Kay, yes. Gods yes.”

“Cassian,” Kaytoo says, emotion heavy in his vocabulator and his central processor. “You’re worth all the trouble, all the pain.”

“You too, Kay,” Cassian says, breathless, eyes dark and brightening with moisture. “Always.” He moans a little, raises his hands jerkily up to cup Kaytoo’s face. “And you’re the only thing,” he whispers, hips rocking, “the only thing I’ve ever wanted for myself. The only one I trust with myself.”

Kaytoo knows this, and yet hearing Cassian say it aloud sets off a deep happiness, a profound sense of being loved. He wants to hold onto that feeling forever, just like he wants to hold Cassian forever.

He twists his fingers, landing on his lover’s sweet spot, and curls his other hand around Cassian’s sex, squeezing, sliding, pumping in counterpoint. Cassian moans incoherently, and Kayoo speeds up, goes deeper, expertly wrings pleasure from his lover.

“ _Kay!_ ” Cassian cries, and spasms, cock throbbing and spine arching and hands clutching Kaytoo’s face and neck, knuckles white. Kaytoo keeps the stimulation up a little while after that, as requested, watching Cassian’s face and body for signs of bad tension, easing off when the thrashing gets too close to a pain response.

“I will always love you,” Kaytoo murmurs, stroking hair from his lover’s face. It’s cheating, to say it now, but he does it anyway. He needs to say it, and it’s the most likely time Cassian won’t immediately shut him out, if his lover even registers the words beyond their cadence.

Cassian curls onto his side, around Kaytoo as much as he can, presses his face against the droid’s hip. Kay wonders which it is - incomprehension or tacit acceptance - and says nothing else, just keeps touching Cassian. They stay like that for a few moments, metal arms curled around a human body curled around folded durasteel legs.

A little while later, Cassian’s voice is so low that Kaytoo almost doesn’t hear him, words half-garbled by the metal against his lips.

“Always love you, too.”

The feeling flashing through Kaytoo’s wires has nothing to do with the hedonic processor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s done. I finished it. All 46,000+ words of it. Madre de dios. I have a few other ideas involving our favorite sassbot and disaster human, but this particular story is done. I’m both relieved to have finished it and a little sad, because writing this has been an amazing experience.
> 
> I want to thank each and every person who read, kudoed, bookmarked, and commented. Especially the commenters. I’m not sure what I was expecting when I started writing this, but definitely not to have more comments than kudos, and definitely not to be equally obsessed with the story and reader response. To have people love this story so much has been incredible. It’s kept me going. It’s made it a better story, because through the comments I got a sense of what worked for y’all, and because I wanted to give you my best efforts as a thank-you for all the kind words. Y’all are the best and deserve happiness and rainbows and adorable baby animals.
> 
> I’d love to keep in touch on Tumblr. Find me at [bright-elen](https://bright-elen.tumblr.com/).
> 
> If you haven't already, go look at the great [art](http://clawsou.com/post/160304070197/i-have-so-many-feels-now-this-is-tribute-to-this) Clawsou made for this story!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [What do you get out of it?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10289804) by [A Kiss of Fire (TigerDragon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/A%20Kiss%20of%20Fire), [Bright_Elen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/pseuds/Bright_Elen)




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